PACE Committee Approves Resolution on Sarsang Reservoir

The PACE Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development approved on November 26 a draft resolution that calls on the Armenian authorities to stop the use of water resources "as a tool of political influence."

Adopting a draft resolution called Inhabitants of Frontier Regions of Azerbaijan Deliberately Deprived of Water, based on a report prepared by Milica Markovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina, SOC), the parliamentarians said that the lack of regular maintenance work for over 20 years on the Sarsang reservoir, located in one of the areas of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia, “poses a danger to the whole border region”. They emphasized that the state of disrepair of the Sarsang dam could result in a “major disaster with great loss of human life” and possibly a fresh humanitarian crisis.

In view of this urgent humanitarian problem, the Committee requested “the immediate withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the region concerned”, thus allowing access by independent engineers and hydrologists to carry out a detailed on-the-spot survey and international supervision of the irrigation canals, the state of the Sarsang and Madagiz dams, the schedule of water releases during the autumn and winter, and aquifer overexploitation.

They requested the Armenian authorities to cease using water resources “as tools of political influence or an instrument of pressure” benefiting only one of the parties to the conflict. —06D—