May 29, 2008

RAFFI HOVANNISIAN AND HERITAGE AT EUROPEAN CONCLAVES

Paris, Berlin—Raffi K. Hovannisian, chairman of the Heritage Party and Armenia’s first minister of foreign affairs, took part from May 21 to 28 in a series of international parliamentary conferences convened in the French and German capitals.

In Paris from May 21 to 23, Raffi Hovannisian attended the meeting of the Committee on Culture, Science and Education of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) of which he is a member. He addressed the Committee on agenda items relating to reports on youth cooperation in Europe, the sports dimension of the Olympic Games, and cultural heritage.

In this connection, Raffi Hovannisian expressed solidarity with Edward O’Hara, the Committee’s General Rapporteur on the Cultural Heritage, who intended to commence his goodwill mission to the entire South Caucasus with visits to Baku and Nakhichevan over the summer. The PACE secretariat had written a letter to the head of the Azerbaijani delegation, O’Hara reported, informing him of this intention but a response was still pending. Upon this briefing by the Rapporteur, the Azerbaijani delegate in the Committee launched a tirade against Armenia, Mountainous Karabagh, PACE and Rapporteur O’Hara, effectively revealing the predisposition of his government not to allow realization of the mission. In conclusion, Hovannisian moved without objection that the Committee provide full support to the O’Hara initiative, finalize the modalities of his first visit by the upcoming PACE session in June, and reauthorize him to carry out that mission immediately thereafter and to report back to the Committee no later than the September session about its results or, that failing, the reasons for its failure.

In Berlin between May 23 and 28, Raffi Hovannisian joined MPs Artur Aghabekyan and Karen Avagyan at the Reichstag to compose the Armenian delegation to the spring session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA). There Hovannisian addressed the Political Committee on a draft report entitled “Iran: Making a Case for NATO’s Political Engagement,” focusing among other topics on Iran’s role in the area, the priority of constructive engagement, as well as Mountainous Karabagh’s liberty, decolonization and lawfully-constituted sovereignty as a stabilizing factor in terms of the Islamic Republic and the broader region.

In the NATO PA meeting of the Committee on the Civil Dimension of Security, under whose auspices Raffi Hovannisian and delegation chairman Artur Aghabekyan had recently visited Serbia and Kosovo, Hovannisian took the floor during the discussion on “The Assembly’s Contribution to NATO’s Strategic Concept,” suggesting that the new concept aspire for the day—or at least countenance the contingency—that the Transatlantic Alliance and Russia will ultimately find themselves on the same security page, and that both members of and applicants to the alliance should demonstrate their commitment to its “shared values” by passing a periodic state-by-state examination on democracy, rule of law, good governance, human rights protection, and condemnation and prevention of genocide and other crimes against humanity. In the same Committee, he also intervened in response to a draft report on “State and Religion in the Black Sea Region,” addressing such issues as the Armenian Genocide, self-determination and sovereignty for Artsakh, and minority rights guarantees, or the deficiency thereof, in Turkey and Azerbaijan.

During the plenary session of the NATO PA, held on May 27 in the hall of the German Bundestag, Raffi Hovannisian posed questions to NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on NATO’s regional approach to the Caucasus and on the ostensibly Kosovo-based reasons for Azerbaijan’s withdrawal from KFOR just as Armenia was doubling its peacekeeping commitment to it. He also asked of German Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier whether there was an inherent connection between postwar Germany’s fortitude and will to take responsibility and seek redemption for the genocidal policies of its predecessor regime and achievement of its current capacity of leadership in the democratic world; against this background whether there was any counsel he might offer to other NATO member-states with similar histories; and finally whether the Federal Republic of Germany, as the exemplary global benchmark in this field, was prepared to take it to the highest level by recognizing the German military role in the Great Genocide and attendant national dispossession of the Armenian heartlands during and after World War One, in this way guiding the primarily responsible party toward its own assumption of history and a long-awaited normalization of relations between NATO member Turkey and IPAP partner Armenia.