Baku's membership in CoE may be questioned

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.