ARMENPRESS NEWS AGENCY

4 minute read

The semi-weekly 168 Zham writes that the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg published his report about the visit to Armenia in January of the running year. The paper says the report gives rather tough assessments and in particular in the part referring to the March 1 2008 unrest, the commissioner described the force used against participants of the rally as "disproportionate" and the steps carried out for revealing the causes of death of 10 people as "ineffective". "Till now the people responsible for what happened are not revealed. The responsibility to which the top Police and the National Security Service officials must be subjected for their orders have not been seriously discussed", the report of the Commissioner says. The paper says Hammarberg noted that the authorities must be more resolute in revealing what happened and subject people guilty in it to responsibility.

The semi-weekly also writes it has learnt that the leader of the Armenian National Congress Levon Ter-Petrosyan has assigned to prepare a list of trusted people for getting prepared to the possible extraordinary presidential elections. In the current political situation this information, seems mildly to say, impossible and it is not excluded that the news was put into circulation only having propaganda goals to "inspire hope" to the participants of the May 31 rally. The semi-weekly says according to the news a task group has been set up in the ANC which must conduct formal negotiations with the authorities.

The daily Aravot writes that the US ambassador to Azerbaijan, former co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk group Matthew Bryza is planning to "exert all the efforts" to help the mediators in adoption of the basic principles over the Karabakh conflict settlement. The paper says in response to the question of the Azeri 1news.az on how he sees the South Caucasus in 5 years, whether the conflicts will be solved here or not, he said "I do not know. It is a hypothetic question. I can only answer about issue I am responsible for. My mission is to assist the OSCE Minsk group in their work".

The daily Hayots Ashkhar writes that NA chairman Hovik Abrahamyan stated yesterday that the authorities are ready to cooperate. "I have always suggested that the NA platform be made a platform for various discussions, opinions, criticism. The authorities are always ready to listen irrespective of whose opinion it is. It will be right to bring the discussions, expressions of opinions from streets to the parliament", the daily cited him as saying. The paper says Hovik Abrahamyan expressed conviction that as a result of coming parliamentary the ANC will appear in the NA "and how many mandates it will have, the people will decide".

English