Vartan Oskanian, PAP MP, today has made a speech during the special session of National Assembly.
The speech of Vartan Oskanian is presented below”
:
“Honorable Assembly
First of all I want to pay a tribute to Gurgen Margaryan’s family and relatives. Our entire nation was shocked and angry when the murderer was extradited. Imagine Margaryan’s family’s sorrow and pain, disappointment and anger when the murderer of their son gets freedom in his own country.
First of all let’s have courage to accept that the other reason for our disappointment and anger is also our government’s mistake concerning the issue. It is unacceptable that our government found out about everything only after the criminal was in his country. It is merely out of my understanding that even after few weeks of the Armenian community in Hungary shouting about the issue, urging for action, our government was not aware of this deal between Azerbaijan and Hungary. I think that this assembly should call for responsibility from the government. I just think that everything that we did now, in case of being done two weeks ago, would prevent Safarov from being released and honored.
I want to stress that Hungary’s decision to extradite Azerbaijani officer, Ramil Safarov, was disgusting from both moral and legal aspects.
From a moral point of view, Hungary was to consult with the Armenian side, let alone the centuries-old friendship between the two countries, the existence of the Armenian community in Hungary, Armenia’s contribution to the struggle for the liberation of Hungary, etc.
From a legal point of view, Hungary has violated the provisions of the European Convention on Extradition, fully realizing that the moment Safarov stepped his country, he will not serve his remaining sentence in Baku as was envisaged by the Convention.
Hungary’s decision was inadmissible; there cannot be two opinions.
But I want you to admit that Armenian side has done a lot of mistakes too, that’s why now we have, what we have.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Security Service have stumbled in their work. There cannot be two opinions in this issue either. The fact is that everybody was aware of the pending extradition two weeks before Hungary made the decision. Both the Armenian community in Hungary and Armenian NGOs had warned about the possible extradition but to no avail. They all met complete indifference in Armenia. In fact, our state agencies were to warn everyone, including the community, NGOs and ordinary people about it. Today, we become more convinced that the clamor raised in Armenia, Hungary and international community was to precede the incident. I don’t even doubt that in that case we would be able to avoid Safarov’s extradition to Azerbaijan.
So, we see that only by complaining we won’t succeed, we should make major steps towards the issue.
It is the right time, to use this awful event, and solve the Nagorno –Karabakh conflict, once and forever. We should be together; we shouldn’t have tensions inside our country, in order to overcome the difficulties which we face nowadays.
It is time for unified and serious steps!” stressed Oskanian.
