Russia again warns Armenia against ratification of Rome Statute
YEREVAN, September 13. /ARKA/. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova again lashed out at Armenian authorities for their intention to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) describing the move as 'an unfriendly step.'
Zakharova recalled that the Armenian ambassador was recently summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry and was rebuked in connection with a number of 'unfriendly steps' of official Yerevan. One of those steps is the intention to ratify the Rome Statute.
"We have already said how we qualify this move. Yerevan will have to qualify its motivation, explain and clarify what are they doing it for and why? They, by the way, have presented their explanations, but we consider such steps as unfriendly, which we have repeatedly said," she said at a press briefing on Wednesday
At a press conference on Monday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that the process of ratifying the Rome Statute is not related to Armenian-Russian relations,
"We started the ratification of the Rome Statute back in December 2022. The ratification process within the framework of our procedures takes some time. Unfortunately, it has coincided with relations between Russia and the International Criminal Court. It should be noted that this process is not related to the relations between Armenia and the Russian Federation. It is rather related to border tensions," Pashinyan told Armenia's Public Television.
He pointed out that Armenia's motivation in ratifying the Rome Statute is to have Azerbaijan's aggressions against Armenia's sovereignty and territorial integrity in May 2021 and September 2022 be subject to the International Court of Justice.
"This would be another factor to increase our security given that the CSTO has not and, unfortunately, does not fulfill its obligations towards Armenia," Pashinyan noted.
Armenia signed the Rome Statute in 1998, but has not ratified it after the Constitutional Court in 2004 found that the treaty’s obligations contradicted several provisions of the Constitution in effect at the time.
In late 2022, the Armenian government asked the Constitutional Court to examine the constitutionality of the Rome Statute.
According to the government, the ratification of this document would allow it to initiate legal proceedings against Azerbaijan (for war crimes committed in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia) at the ICC.
On March 24, Armenia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the country’s obligations under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) comply with the Basic Law.
On March 17 of this year, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for ‘war crimes’ for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, who according to an ICC statement ‘bear individual criminal responsibility for the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February last year.-0-
