The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) welcomes
President Serzh Sarkisian’s decision to form a supposedly independent body that
will investigate post-election violence in Yerevan, the head of its Armenian
office said on Friday.



Ambassador Sergei Kapinos said the OSCE is encouraged by the anticipated
participation of representatives of the Armenian opposition and the human rights
ombudsman in the Fact-Finding Group of Experts formed by Sarkisian. “We hope
that the group will also give a new impetus to the work of the parliamentary
commission examining the events of March 1,” he told journalists.



The group, in which the opposition and the government camp are to be equally
represented, will have the right to ask international experts to assist in the
inquiry.



Kapinos doubted that the OSCE will provide experts for the probe if it is asked
to by the investigative body. “The organization simply has no experience of
participating in and sending experts to such an inquiry,” he said.



Prosecutor-General Aghvan Hovsepian asked the OSCE and the United Nations last
April to assist in the separate criminal investigation into what the Armenian
authorities say was an opposition attempt to stage a coup d’etat following the
February 19 presidential election. More than 70 opposition supporters remain
under arrest as part of that investigation. Western governments and human rights
bodies say many of them were jailed for exercising their political rights and
must be released.



According to Kapinos, the OSCE’s Warsaw-based Office of Democratic Institutions
and Human Rights (ODIHR) has been monitoring ongoing trials of the arrested
oppositionists and plans to release a detailed report early next year.

By Ruben Meloyan