Armenia’s Heritage party leader to attend international conference of Asian political parties in Baku
21.11.2012,
16:19
The leader of Armenian opposition party Heritage Raffi Hovhannisian will attend the Seventh Assembly General of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties to be held in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, November 22-23.
YEREVAN, November 21. /ARKA/. The leader of Armenian opposition party Heritage Raffi Hovhannisian will attend the Seventh Assembly General of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties to be held in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, November 22-23.
Hovhannisian told reporters on Wednesday that Heritage had received an invitation to participate in the assembly several months ago, when the “Safarov case” was on fire. Due to this, the party refused from attending the conference in the country, “which releases and patronizes as a hero some cowardly murderer (Safarov).”
The Azeri serviceman, Ramil Safarov, was given a life sentence for hacking Armenian officer Gurgen Markarian to death with an axe on 19 February 2004 in Budapest during NATO training. On 31 August Budapest extradited Safarov to Azerbaijan where he was immediately pardoned by President Ilham Aliyev.
These actions erupted outrage in Yerevan. On 31 August Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan invited the heads of all diplomatic missions in Armenia to the extraordinary meeting and said Armenia suspends all diplomatic relations with Hungary. Contacts between Armenia and Azerbaijan have sharply deteriorated since then.
“Later on, the organizers offered some new conditions for participation guaranteeing for me free and equal speech in Baku. Based on that, I decided to accept the invitation and make a speech there. With this aim I am heading for Baku today,” Heritage leader said.
According to Hovhannisian, he will strictly follow the main principals of the party while making his speech: the state sovereignty, the national interests and respect to the civil rights.
He noted the party had earlier attended the assembly in Cambodia, where Hovhannisian’s speech was related to the 1915 Armenian Genocide issue, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, democracy and human rights.
Heritage is a national-liberal political party. It was established in 2002 by the first minister of foreign affairs of Armenia Raffi Hovhannisian. It has five seats in the current parliament. -0-
