As long as the NKR is not an OSCE member state...
Isn't it time for international organizations and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights to revise their position on monitoring elections in unrecognized republics as well? This is what member of the Armenian Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Stepan Safaryan asked during the Assembly's plenary session.
"International organizations are setting a de facto barrier between the spirit of the OSCE documents, the fundamental values and international commitment by not monitoring the elections in Nagorno-Karabakh. It is this barrier that must be eliminated; otherwise, the theory of democratic peace that we all believe in will fail exactly when it comes to issues such as this," says Stepan Safaryan.
The answer to this observation was expected.
"We can't be involved in the monitoring of elections as long as Nagorno-Karabakh is not a member state. Besides that, we are still working with Armenia and Azerbaijan," said Head of the ODIHR, Ambassador Yanez Lenarchich.
Let us remind that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA) took the draft resolution on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict out of the agenda of the 56th sitting.
The initial program of the 56th sitting of the NATO PA included a 6-point draft resolution by Canadian reporter Rinl Andreychuk , including the formulation "occupation of seven regions" which was inacceptable for the Armenian side.
In June, Chairman of the National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan had sent a letter to President of the Assembly John Tanner in which he called on the Assembly to "refrain from discussing the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict" and expressed certainty that the initiatives taken out of the format of the OSCE Minsk Group will harm the negotiations process.
