The Diplomat
A delegation of Azeri parliamentarians have visited Spain to meet with members of the Spanish Parliament, days after the Plenary of the Spanish Congress rejected an agreement signed between the Government of Spain and the Government of Azerbaijan on the exchange and mutual protection of classified information.
The delegation of the Azerbaijani National Assembly was formed by the president of the International and Interparliamentary Relations Committee, Samad Seyidov, and Sevil Mikayilova, head of the Working Group for Azerbaijani-Spanish Interparliamentary Relations, who were accompanied by Magsad Huseynov, second secretary of the Embassy of the Asian country in Madrid.
The Azerbaijani parliamentarians met with members of the Joint Committee for the European Union, and held separate meetings with the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Congress, Pau Marí-Klose, and with spokespersons of the different parliamentary groups, in order to find out the possibilities of the Spanish-Azeri agreement being approved.
The plenary session of the Congress rejected the ratification of the agreement signed between Spain and Azerbaijan on the 3rd, after the votes against by the PP were joined by those of Vox and the pro-independence parties, parliamentary partners of the government, and Unidas Podemos, a member of the government coalition, abstained.
The PP MPs justified their rejection by arguing that, at the beginning of October, Congress approved an institutional declaration condemning what they considered to be an “Azeri aggression in Armenia that left more than 200 dead in September”. Pro-independence parties such as ERC, Bildu and the PNV were, for their part, very harsh, rejecting Azerbaijan’s actions and criticising the government for having signed the agreement.
The Spanish government seems to have opted, for the time being, not to send the text of the agreement to the Senate in order to avoid another rejection, a situation that is rare when international agreements are submitted to Parliament.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been involved in several clashes in recent years over the control of Nagorno-Karabakh. The territory, with a majority Armenian population but internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, has been the focus of conflict since it decided to secede in 1991 from the Republic of Azerbaijan, following the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
The governments of the two countries were scheduled to meet on 7 December in Brussels, but a few days ago, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said he would not meet with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinjan after he said he would agree to the meeting only on the condition that French President Emmanuel Macron would attend. Emmanuel Macron. Azerbaijan considers Paris to have a pro-Armenian stance on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, because Macron accused the Baku government in October of “launching a terrible and brutal war” in the territory.
