Twenty delegates of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), headed by Lindblad Göran (Sweden), submitted a resolution called “Involvement of the Army in the Events of March 2008 in Armenia.” The document will be put to vote during the March plenary session of PACE.

In the document consisting of eight terms, delegates criticize the report (on post-election clashes) of the ad hoc Committee of the Armenian Parliament on the March 1-2 events.

And according to the delegation, the reason for submitting the resolution is that significant information was left out of the report that would influence any characterization of the election aftermath uprising. (The ad hoc committee’s report was submitted to PACE Sept, 2009.)

Specifically stated in the proposed resolution, but missing from the ad hoc committee report is information that then (2008) Defense Minister of Armenia Michael Harutyunyan on February 23, 2008 issued an order not vetted by the legislation of Armenia. The order, in effect, prepared units of the Republic of Armenia Army for battle against fellow citizens.

The draft resolution states:

“Outraged by the existence - recently discovered and made public – of secret order No. 0038, proving that Armenian army units received formal orders to assemble and deploy in Yerevan before 1 March,” and “Considering that the involvement of the army in domestic political matters, accompanied by large-scale repression of citizens’ civil and political rights and persecution of the political opposition, clearly bears the characteristics of a coup d’etat.”

Considering the revelation of the secret order, the PACE delegates call on Armenian authorities to return to an investigation, considering “unacceptable the attempts by the Armenian authorities to conceal the involvement of the army in the events of 1 March 2008.”

This draft resolution caused concern among Armenian authorities. According to Republican MP Samvel Nikoyan, who headed the ad hoc committee “it (the resolution) is nothing but a new means of pressure”.

Meanwhile, Michael Danielyan, Chairman of Armenian Helsinki Association, agrees with the assessments of the resolution, saying that the March 1-2 events were, in fact, a “coup d’etat.”

“What else can you call it if not a coup d’etat? If the army appears in public, and tries to keep power by force, then it is an armed coup. And the organizers must sooner or later take the responsibility for it,” Danielyan told ArmeniaNow.