Prosperous Party MP Naira Zohrabyan has told Hetq that Azerbaijan has petitioned the forthcoming Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) plenary session in Strasbourg (23-27 June) and is seeking that members of the Armenian delegation be stripped of its voting rights.

Zohrabyan, a member of the Armenian delegation to PACE, claimed that a group of Azerbaijani lobbyists have challenged the powers of the delegation.

In a conversation with Hetq, Zohrabyan noted that Azerbaijan took over the chairmanship of the CoE’s Committee of Ministers in May and that some three months ago Azerbaijani President Aliev threatened to raise the issue at the June plenary session.

Zohrabyan named Azerbaijani MP Elkhan Suleymanov (Group of the European People's Party (EPP/CD)) as the ringleader of the Azerbaijani petition.

She added that the scheduled address of President Ilham Aliyev at the June session would be “full of large doses of anti-Armenian hysteria and racist elements.”

Zohrabyan argued that all this was an attempt by Baku to divert attention from the recent scandal where PACE Vice President René Rouquet (France) was barred from entering Azerbaijan because he was viewed as an Armenian sympathizer.

She was certain that this attempt by the Azerbaijani delegation was doomed to failure.