Today, Azerbaijan
Nov 21 2009

There is a need to set up European integration institution:
Azerbaijani parliamentary official

21 November 2009 [09:57] – Today.Az

Azerbaijani parliament’s chief of staff Safa Mirzayev has made
statement on state of fulfillment of Azerbaijan’s commitments to the
Council of Europe.

He said it was not difficult for Azerbaijan to cope with Council of
Europe monitoring and even some countries that joined the Council of
Europe before Azerbaijan are still under the monitoring.

`Monitoring will be conducted until Azerbaijan completely fulfills
commitments to the Council of Europe. There are two main laws among
the commitments that remains to be fulfilled` draft law on alternative
service and convention on languages of ethnic minorities,’ he said.

`Regarding the first draft law, it can not be adopted while the state
of war continues. There were some financial problems with the second
issue. After ratification of this convention, the government should
assign huge funds to open schools, TV channels and publish books for
ethnic minorities. The situation was normal until the last year and we
thought that the problems would be solved soon. But financial crisis
delayed the issue. There are still some commitments in the field of
court system. It will be solved gradually. This is not a contest that
to think who will finish first. Everything should be carried out in
time.’

Speaking about the Council of Europe Secretary General’s statement
about the arrest of bloggers, Mirzayev said such questions are
periodically raised by international organizations.

`Once you get familiar with details of the case, you make sure that
the question is only of criminal nature. The criminals should be
punished anywhere. We are aware of that statement and now are working
on that. We will inform the Council of Europe co-rapporteurs about the
essence of the incident’.

Speaking about the proposals to establish parliamentary committees on
Karabakh and European integration, Mirzayev said one of them could be
established as a commission.

`We need to establish an institution on European integration. It is
not necessary to establish it in the form of committee. According to
regulations, MP can be member of one committee only. We need to
withdraw MPs from other committees to form it which may affect work of
other committees. I think we don’t need a committee on Karabakh. We
are not working on legislation about Karabakh yet while the main duty
of the committee is lawmaking. Karabakh problem is discussed in all
committees,’ he said.

/APA/

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