Ethnic Armenian member of the Georgian parliament Samvel Petrosyan criticized some of his colleagues on Wednesday for voting for a controversial Council of Europe resolution regarding access to water in Nagorno-Karabakh, DFWatch reports.
The resolution passed at the Council of Europe parliamentary Assembly on January 26 asserts that “inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water”. 98 MPs voted for it, 71 against, and 40 abstained.
Georgian MPs Tedo Japaridze, Irakli Chikovani and Giorgi Kandelaki voted for the resolution.
At a plenary session of parliament, Petrosyan called the resolution biased and said people in the community he represents, the southern town Akhalkalaki, were astonished by the way the Georgian delegates voted.
“Despite the anti-Armenian views of certain politicians, I am confident that brotherly ties between the Georgian and Armenian nations will deepen and develop in the future.”
Head of Georgian Dream’s faction Giorgi Volsky called Petrosyan’s statement ‘populist’ and said the Georgian delegation to PACE did not do anything to cause tension in Georgia’s neighborhood.
“The closer we get to the election the more populist statements there will be. Georgia is our common country for Georgians, Armenians and Azeri. Let’s keep stability in this state,” he said, adding that the energy supply problem has gotten worse and needs to be solved.
