PACE SEEKS TO RELAUNCH DISCUSSIONS ON FROZEN CONFLICTS IN EUROPE

armradio.am
31.10.2007 16:36

The Monitoring Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe (PACE), which seeks to enforce the honouring of obligations
and commitments by the Council’s member states, will be holding a
hearing on "frozen conflicts" in cooperation with the German Institute
for International and Security Affairs (SWP), at the Bundestag
in Berlin on 5 and 6 November 2007, focusing on the situations in
Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria.

On joining the Council of Europe, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and
Moldova undertook to seek peaceful settlements to these conflicts,
and the Russian Federation has also entered into specific commitments
regarding certain of these regions.

The hearing has the twofold objective of bringing together leading
experts and government ministers to take stock of the current situation
with regard to each of these conflicts and of initiating a debate on
the Council of Europe’s future role in the conflict settlement process.

On the first day the hearing will take the form of an exchange of views
between the committee’s members and experts (historians, researchers,
international legal specialists, think tank representatives) and will
help clarify the positions of the parties to the conflicts through
discussion of the established facts.

The following day will be devoted to discussions with senior government
representatives from the countries concerned. The committee will then
hold a meeting in camera in the afternoon to analyze the hearing’s
results.

A press conference will take place at 2 pm on 6 November at the
Bundestag with, among others, Moldova’s Minister of Reintegration
Vasilii Å~^ova, Georgia’s State Minister for Conflict settlement
Davit Bakradze, Azerbaijan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov,
the Chair of the Monitoring Committee Eduard Lintner, and SWP Director
Uwe Halbach.

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