Italy-Armenia Friendship Group of Italian Parliament Hosted in National Assembly

On May 18, the meeting in the extended format of Armenian and Italian deputies took place in parliament at the level of Friendship Groups.

The Head of the NA Armenia-Italy Friendship Group Maria Karapetyan touched upon the parliamentary cooperation, the importance of the mutual visits of the deputies and the representatives of the executive body. The deputy expressed her gratitude for the adoption of the resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide by the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of Italy in April 2019.

At the meeting the 44-day war, the post-war situation, the Armenian prisoners of war illegally held in Baku was touched upon. In that context Maria Karapetyan evaluated the resolution adopted by the Parliament of Italy in March of this year, by which the Italian parliamentarians affirmed the importance of the return of Armenian prisoners of war. The deputy underlined the statements made by the parliamentarians of Italy during the war unleashed by Azerbaijan in 2020.

The Head of Italy-Armenia Friendship Group Giulio Centemero highlighted the further activation of the Armenian-Italian cooperation, the parliamentary diplomacy, singling out especially the role of the Friendship Groups. Giulio Centemero referred to the EU-Armenia Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement. The deputy spoke about the successes of the children of the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies and the Armenian educational-cultural peculiarities.

The members of the NA Armenia-Italy Friendship Group Tsovinar Vardanyan, Sona Ghazaryan, Hasmik Hakobyan, Lusine Badalyan, Meri Galstyan, Sargis Khandanyan and Arusyak Julhakyan attended the meeting in an extended format.

In their speeches the deputies related to the 44-day war, the situation in the Nagorno Karabakh (NK), the Armenian spiritual-cultural heritage passed under control of Azerbaijan and in that issue the denial policy pursued by Azerbaijan and the behavior distorting the reality. The parliamentarians presented to their Italian colleagues the humanitarian crisis created in the NK. The work of the demarcation and delimitation between the NK and Azerbaijan and the normalization process of the Armenian-Turkish relations were also touched upon.