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The newly appointed chairman to Nagorno-Karabakh ad hoc committee of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, or PACE, Mr. Jordi Xuclà i Costa says he plans to be an impartial and professional mediator in highly protracted Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. However, his major points may still be questionable for those, who know this conflict well.

A law professor at a local university, he claims that in the PACE there are obviously other MPs, perhaps knowing the region better, but they have been accused of showing a partisan approach to either Armenia or Azerbaijan. Therefore Mr. Xuclà i Costa claims his appointment is to eliminate any such accusations as far as he doesn’t represent any interest group in this particular issue. “I have the experience, but I don’t have any interest in [any] of the two parts. And this is one of the reasons of my election as the chairman of this ad hoc sub-committee”, told Mr. Xuclà i Costa in a phone interview to Panorama.am.

As unveiled by Mr. Xuclà i Costa, the renewed agenda of ad hoc committee is to prepare "draft conclusions" of their annual work at the end of the year. "During this period my interest is not to speak too much – this is the condition for the successful activities", assured Mr. Xuclà i Costa. In a clarifying question whether the “draft conclusions” are to serve as a basis for another PACE resolution on Nagorno-Karabakh, Mr. Xuclà i Costa offered a good proof of his "impartial" and "well-informed" stance. He specifically underlined that Nagorno Karabakh conflict had a rather clear-cut case in the international law, which, according to him, "[is] a controversy between two [sovereign] countries, between the sovereignty and territorial [integrity]". In another clarification of his position he argued that he had no misspelling and demonstrated another evidence of "unbiased" position: "Exactly", he added, "this is a controversy between two parts, no more … [a conflict] about Nagorno Karabakh, which is not an independent actor in the process, it is part of the conflict". The next single-word answer deepened his former arguments. In a question whether he meant that it was a conflict between two subjects of international law about a territory, i.e. a territorial conflict, he said: “Exactly”.

One may think that the protracted mission of OSCE Minsk Group co-Chairs, a usual target for Azerbaijani authorities, has got another headache in the face of PACE sub-committee freshman.