"EXTREMELY CRITICAL APPROACH ADOPTED TO FORM COUNCIL OF EUROPE POSITION"

Panorama.am
20:14 22/11/2008

"I have one good and one bad news," said Thomas Hammarberg the
Commissioner of Human Rights of Council of Europe starting his press
conference in Yerevan. According to Mr. Hammarberg a good thing is
that data collecting expert group is structured which is independent,
representatives of different political groups and experts are involved
in it. He said that the group has chances to reach a success if all
the social groups support them.

Regarding the bad news, the Commissioner said: "When I prepare my
report, I will have to be critical with the developments, or even with
their lack. I am going to be critical both with the court procedures
which are over and those 7 cases which are start. For instance, to me,
it’s completely unacceptable to publish the report of phone records
of arrested people, their families and politicians, which was done
by the officers of special service. In a country of rule of law this
is completely unacceptable."

"I have already said to the President and the members of the Government
that I am going to be extremely critical when certain positions of
European Institutes and Council of Europe are to be defined," said
Mr. Hammarberg and added: "Georgian incidents, conflict of NKR and
Armenian-Turkish relations will not be influenced in the aftermath
of that position, as we have do deal with the principle human rights
where no violation should have a place."