Indifferent alike to praise or blame

Give heed, O Muse, but to the voice Divine

Fearing not injury, nor seeking fame,

Nor casting pearls to swine.

A.S Pushkin

YEREVAN, MAY 8, ARMENPRESS. So, on May 4, 2017, the State News Agency “Armenpress” published an article “The Secretary General of the OSCE PA congratulated Artashes Geghamyan on his reelection as a member of the National Assembly.” I will not hide that I was very pleased when Secretary General of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Roberto Montella (representative of Italy) wrote a very friendly congratulatory letter to me at the beginning of his working day (at 13:43 l.t.). “Dear Artashes, dear friend! I am happy to hear that you have been re-elected and I look forward to meeting you soon in Minsk ... See you soon. Roberto, Roberto Montella, Secretary General of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, Copenhagen”, Montella wrote. The fact that this letter would spoil the mood of the members of the Azerbaijani Majlis delegation is beyond doubts. Especially after the scandalous incident on the last winter (February 23-24, 2017, Vienna) session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, when, from the videotape of the meeting of the General Committee on Economic Affairs, Science, Technology and the Environment (February 23, 2017), the live sound of my speech was replaced by a simultaneous English translation. Alas, the whole sarcasm and pejorative tone of the speech, which infuriated the members of the Azerbaijani and Turkish delegations is difficult to grasp in the English translation. In the course of my speech, it came to the point that the delegate from Azerbaijan twice loudly lamented the members of the panel of the meeting with screams that the time of my speech had expired. Not to use the ignorant attack, to put it mildly, of the Azerbaijani parliamentarian would be an unnecessary luxury on my part, which I could not afford. Turning to the presidium of the meeting I asked to place on record that the Azerbaijani side has no objections to the point of my charges (the poisoning of headwater that self-defense forces of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic were forced to take over from the Azerbaijani side in order to avoid an ecological catastrophe in the densely populated areas of Nagorno-Karabakh and Kelbajar district; the sabotage raids by Azerbaijani armed forces who tried to blow up the dam of Sarsang reservoir, which would lead to the flooding of dozens of settlements of Nagorno Karabakh, etc.), as the Azerbaijani parliamentarian in his remarks pointed only to the violation of the time limits from my part. As it was expected, his Turkish colleague was unable to leave “his younger brother in trouble”, and he took the floor, began to speechify about 20% of the Azerbaijani territories allegedly occupied by the Armenian armed forces. To this attack by him, I made a strident statement about 60% of the originally Armenian territories occupied by the Ottoman Empire.

It is possible to cite dozens of other strong examples that were voiced during political debates, or even during skirmishes between the delegates of the National Assembly of Armenia and Azerbaijani and Turkish parliamentarians during the sessions of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in order to highlight the extreme undesirability of re-election of Artashes Geghamyan as a member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia. It is no longer necessary to talk about the inevitable nervous stress of the Azerbaijani-Turkish parliamentarians in connection with the congratulations to your humble servant on this occasion by Roberto Montella, Secretary General of the OSCE PA, who is highly respected in this organization. Alas, this fact caused discouragement and unconcealed malicious glee in some domestic media, as well.

The reader can reasonably wonder: why, then, the author of these lines himself is not guided by the wise advice of the great poet of all times and is trying to “cast pearls to swine”. It is here that the dog is buried. The point is that in my letter addressed to Roberto Montella, political assessments were made about the elections to the RA National Assembly on April 2, 2017. I will quote an extract from my letter from May 4, 2017 to the Secretary General of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.

“Dear Mr. Montella, dear Robert! I send the decision of the Central Electoral Commission on the results of the elections to the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia. I will not hide that I am proud to be elected as a member of the National Assembly in the course of fair, transparent elections in the history of independent Armenia”, my letter said. I could have not elaborated on this matter, especially since the absolutely irrelevant mentioning-reproach, criticism addressed to me as the leader of the RA NA delegation was published in an Internet publication, which does not hide that it is the distributor of gossip, rumors, and it is called like that “Asekose”" – “Gossip” in English. Something else surprised me, that the next day these “gossips”, of course, with the participation of political souffleurs, were already in the headlines of one of the newspapers, which in principle does not enjoy a bad reputation. Surprisingly, the souffleurs of these publications are so ignorant that they managed to accuse me of the fact that several days before the OSCE Permanent Council decided not to extend the mandate of the OSCE Yerevan office. We should note, that on May 4 of this year the representative of Austria presiding at the OSCE made a speech stating that contrary to the efforts made, it was impossible to reach agreement on the extension of the mandate of the Yerevan office, since Azerbaijan vetoed the decision on the organization's budget, substantiating its position by demanding the closure of the OSCE Yerevan office, in connection to which the OSCE Office in Yerevan will cease its activities. For those who are not well-informed or pretending to be such, we should note that the OSCE Permanent Council is the decision-making body for regular political consultations and operational work of the OSCE in the period between the meetings of the Council of Ministers. We should also note that the meetings of the OSCE Permanent Council are convened and headed by the Chairman-in-Office. The Permanent Council is composed of delegates from 57 participating States. The delegation to the Permanent Council consists of representatives from the participating State under the leadership of the Ambassador appointed as Permanent Representative to the OSCE. This is a note for the political souffleurs, who have strangely revived recently. Here comes the veto imposed by the Azerbaijani Ambassador to the OSCE (decisions are taken by consensus), happens to be on the conscience of Artashes Geghamyan, head of the РА NA delegation to the OSCE PA. Apparently, according to their logics A. Geghamyan is very harshly reacting to the defaming and openly slanderous statements of the Azerbaijani-Turkish parliamentarians at the sessions of the OSCE PA. Moreover, they were very upset that Artashes Geghamyan’s colleagues, in the person of Christine Muttonen, the President of OSCE PA,  and Christian Vigenin, Special Representative of the OSCE PA for the South Caucasus, made a statement on the same day, 4 May of this year, in which Christine Muttonen stated: “I regret that, despite long and lengthy efforts, the Permanent Council has not been able to reach a consensus on the continuation of the activities of the OSCE Office in Yerevan. The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly has repeatedly called for reliable OSCE mandates and all the necessary resources to be carried out in the OSCE field missions so that they can fulfill their vital tasks, but, unfortunately, another field operation is being closed down.” To make the information  complete, I would like to say that during the winter (2017) session of the OSCE PA, I expressed these concerns to the heads of the OSCE PA. Moreover, my concerns have received full understanding on their part. I do not want to go into the details of these conversations, despite the great temptation for me in terms of their exceptional favor for the Armenian side, so as not to arm our Azerbaijani and Turkish opponents, as well as domestic ignorant near-political souffleurs for the next ordered malicious glee.

It seemed like one could put an end to this. But this is only at first glance. The entire danger of publications in “Gossips” and Co is that too primitively and dangerously for the Armenian state, they link the aforementioned decision by the OSCE Permanent Council to “my unsurpassed love for Russia”, with a hint that the Azerbaijani veto was imposed not without a prompt from Russia. To show all the absurdity of the hypothesis on the part of my opponents, I will quote an excerpt from their publication. So, in the explanations of the reasons for the possible closure of the OSCE Yerevan office, ignorant souffleurs say: “Given the fact that unequalled Russia-lover Artashes Geghamyan is the head of the delegation of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia in the OSCE PA, everything becomes clear. In this context, the experts’ opinions seem to be very justified, that the real customer for the closure of the OSCE Yerevan Office is Russia, which is fighting the presence of all organizations associated with the West in the post-Soviet space. And Russia has done this through Azerbaijan.” What is this: manifestation of James Forrestal syndrome, when the first US Defense Secretary James Forrestal imagined Russians everywhere and he threw himself out of the window of the military hospital with a cry: “The Russians are coming!” Alas, in the publications of the “Gossip” and Co there is a dangerous tendency to split the activity of the co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group, which has been painstakingly searching for ways to the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for more than 22 years. I am pleased to state that this is the only reputable international platform where its co-chairmen in the person of the United States, Russia and France (the European Union) act in a very coordinated manner. Apparently this is extremely undesirable not only for Azerbaijan and Turkey (which do not hide their desire to join the co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group at any cost), but also their minions-political souffleurs from Armenia. It should be noted that during the meeting of the Permanent Council in Vienna (May 4, 2017), the US Charge d'Affaires to the OSCE Kate Bernes stated: “If the office in Yerevan is forced to shut down, this will have a bad effect on Azerbaijan and the commitment of the Azerbaijani government to OSCE commitments. We call on Azerbaijan to act constructively for a compromise solution as soon as possible; this will enable not to close the OSCE office in Yerevan.” We should also note that on May 6 of this year Federica Mogherini, the European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, issued a statement in which she expressed concern over the prospect of closing the OSCE Yerevan office: “The Yerevan Office is the last representation of OSCE in South Caucasus. The EU supports the substantial presence of the OSCE in all the countries of the South Caucasus. The Yerevan Office plays an important role in terms of meeting the needs of its host country, Armenia. The concerns raised by Azerbaijan, that the Yerevan Office should not be involved in the processes over the conflict (meaning the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict – A.G) have been reflected in the formulations of the Austrian Chairmanship, while the host country has accepted that solution. The fact that even that gave no results is disappointing. The issues of the formulations that has led to the stalemate situation should not become an obstacle for the prolongation of the mandate of the Yerevan Office. We call on the sides to demonstrate extra will for finding a solution to the issue as soon as possible.” In this regard, I would especially like to note the well-coordinated and purposeful work of the Armenian diplomacy, as a result of which all the leading players of the centers of power in the world politics are unanimous in the opinion that official Yerevan, unlike Azerbaijan, operates in full unison with the commitments undertaken upon accession to the OSCE. However, this extremely annoys not only Azerbaijan and Turkey, but also their souffleurs in Armenia.

Taking into consideration the US and EU statements, the publication in “Gossips” and Co, that vetoing by Azerbaijan was not without Russia’s participation is a vivid example of how political illiteracy and ignorance, anger at everything connected with Russia, can turn into a banal betrayal of national interests of Armenia. In fact, our trouble-souffleurs provided the Azerbaijani side with a way to justify the fiasco of the veto imposed by them: now they can justify their incautious act by saying they did it under the pressure of Russia, which even the hated Armenian press had to admit. Note that it turns out Russia put pressure on Azerbaijan, and not Turkey is behind this veto.

I have to admit regretfully that today’s political souffleurs are as ignorant as they are dangerous for the Armenian state, because their dangerous slander is widely spread in the Armenian mass media. And this is a matter of national security.

Artashes Geghamyan

Member of the Sixth Convocation of the

National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia

from the Republican Party of Armenia

Christine Muttonen, President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly,

(to the right of the President of the OSCE PA) Christian Vigenin, Special Representative of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly on Southern Caucasus

(to the left of the President of the OSCE PA) Artashes Geghamyan and Roberto Montella, Secretary General of the OSCE PA

Vienna, February 24, 2017