ARMENIA HAS FULFILLED ALMOST ALL ITS COMMITMENTS TOWARDS PACE

PanARMENIAN.Net - It seems that in Strasburg they do not doubt any more that Armenia will fulfill all its commitments. The PACE authorities o not hide their satisfaction with this. This is proved particularly by the message addressed by the CoE Secretary General Walter Swimmer to the RA President Robert Kocharyan immediately after the abolishment of death penalty: “I am delighted with the fact that the Armenian authorities has undertaken this positive step. This decision testifies that Armenia remains true to its commitments and wishes to be integrated in the European family”.

The decision adopted later also were appreciated by the PACE leadership. Yerevan has other three months to bring to an end the started process. The deadline is on January 25. The same day is the deadline for Baku to report about the works done. It is evident that the MPs of Baku will not feel themselves very comfortably in Strasburg. Azerbaijan has failed to fulfill series of commitments and ignores the rules adopted by the Council of Europe. The main problem is concerns the political prisoners. This issue has been several times considered in the PACE. Nothing has been done in this direction and Azerbaijan has very little chance to avoid sanctions. The “Echo” newspaper writes in this regard: “Once the PACE MPs have already adopted a resolution titled “Political Prisoners in Azerbaijan”. The second discussion may lead to sanctions against the official Baku”. The inevitability of the problem became more evident after the presidential elections with numerous falsifications. Compared with them,, the elections in Armenia, also led with violations of law, seem a joke. We shall remind that during the PACE autumn session Armenia was not avoiding to discuss the problems concerning the elections. The issue was postponed till the next session because of the Azeri MPs. “It was planned to discuss the pre-election situation in Azerbaijan during those hearings. The Azerbaijani delegation started to protest. As a result, the hearings were postponed till January 2004,” the Echo reads. Even if Azerbaijan manages in someway to avoid sanctions from the council of Europe, it will hardly be possible to put a mark of equality between Yerevan and Baku in Strasbourg. In PACE they have started to understand that the principle of parity is not always efficient.