COUNCIL OF EUROPE MONITORING TO GO ON TILL BAKU MEETS ALL COMMITMENTS

news.az
Nov 20 2009
Azerbaijan

The head of parliament’s administration, Safa Mirzayev, has commented
on Azerbaijan’s progress in meeting its commitments to the Council
of Europe.

"Monitoring will be conducted until Azerbaijan completely fulfils
its commitments to the Council of Europe," Mirzayev said on Friday.

"There are two main laws among the commitments still to be met –
a draft law on alternative military service and ratification of the
European charter on ethnic minority languages. The first draft law
cannot be adopted while the state of war continues. There were some
financial problems with the second issue. After ratification of this
charter, the government has to assign substantial resources to the
opening of schools, TV channels and the publication of books for
ethnic minorities. The situation was fine until last year and we
thought that the problems would be solved soon. But the financial
crisis has delayed the issue. Probably there will not be a problem on
this issue. There are still some commitments on the courts system too.

These will be tackled gradually. This is not a contest to see who
will finish first. Everything has to be done at the right time. The
country and its population should not suffer from these issues."

Speaking about the statement by the Council of Europe secretary
general expressing concern at the deteantion of sentencing of two
youth activists, Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade, Mirzayev said that
these problems occur periodically. "When the details are learned,
it becomes clear that this is only a criminal matter. Criminals have
to be punished everywhere. We know about that statement and are now
working on it. We will inform the Council of Europe co-rapporteurs
about the essence of the incident."

Speaking about proposals to establish parliamentary committees on
Karabakh and European integration, Mirzayev said that just one of
them could be established as a committee. "We need to establish an
institution on European integration. It is not necessary to establish
it in the form of a committee. According to the regulations, an MP can
be a member of one committee only and we need to form a new committee
from members of other committees, which will damage the work of other
committees. According to the domestic regulations, we can establish a
commission and members of different committees could join that. This
is a question not about legislation, but about political direction. I
think we don’t need a committee on Karabakh. We are not working on
legislation about Karabakh yet, while the main duty of a committee is
to make laws. If it is a matter of discussion of the Karabakh problem,
then this issue is discussed in all the committees."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress