BAKU’S MEMBERSHIP IN COE MAY BE QUESTIONED
/PanARMENIAN.Net/
16.11.2009 11:14 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Mr
Thorbjorn Jagland slammed arrest of two bloggers in Azerbaijan.
"I have followed the developments in Azerbaijan for quite a long
time and therefore I could say that we are not so surprised. We are
very concerned about the development with regard to human rights and
democracy in Azerbaijan. It’s always difficult when member states are
not complying with their obligations to the Council of Europe. The
only thing we can do is to always remind them about their obligations.
We also have monitoring mechanism we can use. Whenever things like
this happen, we always have to get authorities to be accountable to
what they are doing," he said.
"Council of Europe does not have the means and tools that can
change the situation immediately. But we believe that for instance
in this case, Azerbaijan’s presence in the Council of Europe will
[lead it to be] influenced over time… We can only have members
in the Council of Europe that are complying with the standards and
values of the organization. That does not mean that everybody has to
be perfect. But [there] is [a] necessity to comply with the rules,
standards, and values that we have and that there going in the right
direction. This is how the Council of Europe works," Mr. Jagland said.
He also emphasized that it is unacceptable to use energy resources
as an excuse for not moving in the right direction with regard to
human rights and democracy, RFE/RL reported.