The pro-government majority in the National Assembly already blocked last month an opposition bill calling for the creation of a separate committee on Karabakh.
The main opposition Hayastan bloc went on to draft another bill that would add Karabakh-related issues to the jurisdiction of the existing parliament committee on foreign relations. The panel would be renamed the Committee on Foreign Relations and Artsakh Affairs.
The parliament committee on legal affairs refused to endorse the bill. Seven of its 11 members represent the ruling party. None of them backed the Hayastan proposal.
“I am sorry to note that this bill does not bring us any closer to pro-Armenian solutions,” said the committee chairman, Vladimir Vartanian. “It would not make the situation worse. It just wouldn’t change anything.”
Hayastan’s Aghvan Vartanian, the main author of the bill, predicted that the pro-government majority will also ensure that the bill is not debated on the parliament floor.
“This will be indicative of the ruling political majority’s attitude to the Artsakh issue,” he told reporters.
Hayastan and another opposition bloc represented in the current parliament hold the government and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in particular responsible for Armenia’s defeat in last year’s war with Azerbaijan.
They also accuse Pashinian of being ready to cede Armenian territory to Azerbaijan and even recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh in ongoing negotiations mediated by Russia. The premier and his political allies deny that.
Pashinian’s government has also been condemned by the opposition for not sending any of its senior officials to Stepanakert last week to attend official ceremonies there that marked the 30th anniversary of the proclamation of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.