TWO ISSUES CONCERNING AZERBAIJAN PUT ON PACE SUMMER SESSION
YEREVAN, JUNE 17, NOYAN TAPAN. The summer session of the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe will be convened in Strasbourg on
June 20-24. No issue directly concerning Armenia is envisaged by the
draft agenda. But the PACE Beauru gave a positive conclusion on the
initiative to put the issue concerning the constitutional reforms
in Armenia on the agenda as an immediate one. It must get necessary
number of votes to be put on the agenda of the plenary sitting. As
Shavarsh Kocharian, a member of the PACE Armenian delegation,
a representative of the NA “Ardarutiun” (“Justice”) bloc informed
the Noyan Tapan correspondent, among the South Caucasian problems,
two issues concerning Azebaijan, about political prisoners and
formation of democratic institutions, are on the agenda of the
session. Malcolm Bruse, a British Deputy appionted as a special
rapporteur will present the first one, and co-rapporteurs on the
Azerbaijani issue at the Monitoring Commission of the Assembly will
present the second one. At the final part of the draft resolution
to be presented to the PA adoption it is particularly mentioned that
if the parliamentary elections to take place in Azerbaijan early in
November do not correspond to international standards and are not
free and just the PA will not recognize the Azerbaijani delegates’
powers at the January session. Besides the plenary sittings, the
representatives of the Armenian delegation will participate in the
discussion of the edited draft of constitutional amendments of Armenia
to be held jointly with the working group of the Venice Commission
on June 23-24. The Ad-hoc Committee on Nagorno Karabakh Issue will
also convene its first sitting during the days of the session of the
Assembly. It was created two months ago according to the demand of the
January resolution of the Assembly concerning Nagorno Karabakh. Heads
of the national delegations to the Assembly of the OSCE Minsk Group
member countries, Armenia and Azerbaijan, rapporteurs on the issue
of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the Assembly are particularly in the
committee headed by Lord Rassel Johnstone. It is envisaged to involve
one additional representative of opposition in the delegations of
Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Committee. The only mission of the
Ad-hoc Committee is to gather information got from the each member
about steps taken by the own country in the direction of supporting
a peace settlement of the Karabaklh conflict, and, summing up the
mentioned information to present an annual report to the Assembly.