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On July 1, the RA NA Vice President Eduard Sharmazanov received the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Hellenic Republic to the Republic of Armenia Ioannis Taghis.

The NA Vice President highly assessed the traditional friendly relations of Armenia and Greece and documented that the Ambassador Ioannis Taghis also his significant contribution to the development and rapprochement of those ties. The interlocutors have affirmed that numerous commonalities unite the two peoples and during recent years the inter-parliamentary relations have especially become close and the field of cooperation has expanded.

Eduard Sharmazanov assessed as a turning point in the Armenian-Greek relations the adoption of the bill anticipating responsibility for the denial of the Armenian Genocide, as well as the statement condemning the Greeks’ and Assyrians’ Genocide by Ottoman Turkey adopted on March 24, 2015 by the Parliament of Armenia. The NA Vice President also emphasized the statement adopted recently by the Parliament of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, by which the genocide perpetrated in Ottoman and Kemalist Turkey towards the Pontian Greeks was also recognized and condemned. Ambassador Ioannis Taghis thanked the Armenian Parliaments for unanimously adopting the statements and officially marking May 19 as Genocide of Pontian Greeks.

At the meetings the sides touched upon the issue of the NK conflict settlement: the NA Vice President has expressed satisfaction in this issue for balanced position of the OSCE member Greece and has underlined that the Armenian side has been and continues to be faithful to its position: i.e. the problem should be solved within the framework of the OSCE group and through the peaceful means. Ambassador Ioannis Taghis also defended this view and noted that the last meetings of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan are hopeful in that respect. In this context, the NA Vice President noted: “The Nagorno Karabakh people should completely exercise their right of self-determination. The holding of the referendum by the Nagorno Karabakh people, the exercise of that right is inscrutable, as the world goes that way. The Artsakh people have the same right of disposing their own destiny through referendum, as people of any other country,” the NA Vice President noted.

In the course of the meeting both sides the April war: in that context the NA Vice President touched upon the visits paid by the Greek deputies to Armenia and Artsakh, assessing them as commitment to the principles of friendship and democracy.

Issues regarding bilateral relations, further cooperation, Armenian and Greek communities and their problems were discussed.