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PACE Bureau held a meeting yesterday and the meeting of PACE Permanent Committee has been held today. The delegation that will observe the referendum in Azerbaijan was formally confirmed at the meeting of the Bureau. Belgian parliamentarian Paul Willy and several parliamentarians of the Council of Europe will arrive in Azerbaijan in capacity of observers. Samad Seyidov said the relations of the Council of Europe with other European organizations, especially with OSCE had been discussed at the meetings of the Bureau and the Permanent Committee.
“We have always said that a problem arouse between OSCE and the Council of Europe in connection with the presidential elections in Azerbaijan. As the elections were highly assed by the observers, there were attempts to misrepresent the preliminary findings and conclusions. These issues were seriously discussed at the meetings of the Bureau and the Permanent Committee. I made a speech and noted that such approaches negatively impacted on the processes going on in the countries and damage the reputation of those organizations. Therefore, I think there were very important discussions from this point of view”.
The plan of measures on the 60th anniversary of the Council of Europe was also in the focus of attention: “Intentions on inviting some persons to these events are not accepted unambiguously. For instance, Mikhail Gorbachov. I delivered a serious speech and noted that Mikhail Gorbachov was one of the main culprits of January 20 tragedy in Azerbaijan’s history and added that if that person were invited to the Council of Europe, it would not positively influence on the reputation of the organization”. It should be noted that the April session of the PACE will discussed the issues regarding the human rights, Georgia-Russia conflict, elections, referendums in CE-member countries as well as the upcoming referendum in Azerbaijan.
