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On June 18 the RA NA President Hovik Abrahamyan received the President of the Congress of the CoE Territorial and Regional Authorities Herwig van Staa, who had arrived in Yerevan to take part in the Bureau Meeting of the CoE Territorial and Regional Authorities being held under the Armenian Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe and at the Conference on theme “Participatory Democracy at Local Level.”

Welcoming the guest the NA President highlighted Mr Staa’s visit to Armenia and participation in the international conference. He highly assessed the role of the Congress in improving and developing the local authorities in Armenia. In Hovik Abrahamyan’s word, the local democracy will be one of the main directions of the priorities of the Armenian Chairmanship in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. It was noted that a number of events are designed through which Armenia will try to have its contribution to the goals of the development of cooperation between the local democracy and the local authorities of the CoE member countries.

Thanking for the reception the President of the Congress of the CoE Territorial and Regional Authorities has noted that the structure successfully cooperates for many years with Armenia and highly assessed the efforts of our country in the local governance in the implementation of the reforms. In his word, Armenia has registered an important progress in this direction. Herwig van Staa welcomed the inter-cultural dialogue adopted by Armenia.

In the course of the meeting the sides touched upon the regional problems, the NK conflict and the Armenian-Turkish relations. Both sides stressed that the problems should be exclusively settled through peaceful negotiations. “The path of peace has no alternative and solutions should only be solved on that plane,” Herwig van Staa said.