"Turkey didn't wish to go further"
On the first day of the working visit to Brussels, Chairman of the RA National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan had a meeting with President of the Belgian Senate Armand de Decker.
The Chairman of Belgium's Senate mentioned that Belgium attaches great importance to the development of bilateral and multilateral relations with Armenia and voiced hope that Hovik Abrahamyan's next visit to Brussels would be an official visit and reaffirmed his invitation.
Let us mention that Chairman of the RA National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan is the first high-ranking Armenian official to visit Brussels after Belgium took the presidency of the European Union.
During the meeting, the parties discussed regional issues as well. Mr. Abrahamyan presented Armenia's approaches to the settlement of the Karabakh conflict and relations with neighboring countries. The NA Chairman stressed that Armenia has declared several times that the conflict must be settled peacefully and Azerbaijan is impeding the process with its bellicose statements. Abrahamyan expressed concern that the international community is not giving an adequate evaluation of Azerbaijan's actions.
Touching upon the process of normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations, Armand de Decker highly appreciated Armenia's daring and initiating policy on establishing relations with Turkey without preconditions, mentioning that Turkey disappointed the European Union by setting preconditions.
During the meeting, the parties discussed issues of bilateral interest as well and in the end, the heads of both parliaments answered journalists' questions.
In response to the question on the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations Mr. Decker said: "I deeply regret that the active diplomacy failed and it was Turkey's fault for setting new conditions in relation to Nagorno-Karabakh at the moment when it had to ratify the signed Protocols. It is disappointing that Turkey didn't wish to go further in the normalization of relations with Armenia."
Touching upon relations with Armenia, Mr. Decker said: "We would like to deepen relations with Armenia within the frame of Belgium's EU presidency. We believe that those relations are fundamental for Armenia and the European Union, which wishes to improve its relations with a country with which it is linked due to an active community in Europe, as well as political and strategic interests."
On the same day, Chairman of the RA National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan had a meeting with deputies of the European Parliament, Co-Rapporteurs on Armenia Thomas Poreba and Charles Tanok.
Mr. Poreba and Mr. Tanok assured that they would do everything possible to present the European Parliament with impartial information about Armenia and the Armenian side's position. The parties considered the presence of closed borders in Europe of the 21st century as inadmissible.
