AZERBAIJAN: BAKU REFUSES TO ELECT A MAYOR

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9/14/09

Azerbaijani officials have dismissed a call from Europe’s key local
governance body to introduce elections for the mayor of Baku, the
Azerbaijani capital.

"Today Azerbaijan is facing more important issues than [conducting
a] mayoral election," the head of Azerbaijan’s delegation to the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Samed Saidov
told the Kavkazsky Uzel news service on September 14.

The Chamber of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe
called on the tightly-controlled South Caucasus state last week to
join neighboring Armenia and Georgia in electing the mayor of its
capital city. "This will serve to reinforce local democracy in the
country," the chamber’s president, Ian Micallef, said in a September
11 statement.

"The first-ever election of the mayor of Yerevan in Armenia in May this
year, and the initiative of the Georgian president to elect directly
the mayor of Tbilisi, which is already an elected position, have
created democratic momentum in South Caucasus," Micallef continued.

Saidov said that Baku is under no obligation to PACE, one of Europe’s
main human rights bodies, to comply with this request, Kavkazsky
Uzel reported.