YEREVAN (combined sources)–A resolution condemning the Armenian Genocide was introduced by the Armenian delegation at the spring session of the Council of Europe held in Strasbourg from April 23-27.
The Council of Europe considers a resolution to be in force as a declaration when a minimum of 20 signatures are collected–from at least 5 countries. The Armenian Genocide resolution was signed by 85 delegates.
Hovhannes Hovhannisian–head of the Armenian parliament’s foreign relations committee and head of the Armenian delegation at the Council of Europe–told a Noyan Tapan correspondent that it is very natural that recognition is initiated in the Council of Europe since the Genocide has been recognized by over 15 countries around the world–as well as by the European Parliament in 1987.
In response to the Armenian Genocide resolution–the Azerbaijani delegation to the Council of Europe distributed a text of a resolution calling on the council to recognize a genocide they say was committed against Azerbaijanis in Armenia and Azerbaijan nearly a century ago.
According to the resolution–the Armenia’s carried out massacres against the Azerbaijanis in 1905-1907 in order to create a "Greater Armenia." The resolution says that in March 1918 Armenia’s purged and committed mass killings of Azerbaijanis in Baku–Shamakhy–Guba–Karabakh–Zangezur–Nakhichevan–Lankaran–and other regions of Azerbaijan. The resolution–which commits only the members of the Council of Europe who have signed it–accuses Armenia of annexing Zangezur and other Azerbaijani lands with the help of the Soviet regime in 1920. The declaration also mentions a massacre of the population of the town of Khodjaly in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1992 by Armenian forces. 22 of the 29 signatures gathered for the Azeri resolution came from Azerbaijani and Turkish delegates.
Hovhannisian plans on forwarding documen’s written in the native languages of the 7 other members who signed the Azeri text––providing them with proof of the Armenian Genocide.