Fri 20 November 2009 | 13:46 GMT Text size:

Council of Europe

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.”

APA