Expelling Armenia from the Council of Europe is out of question. The Parliamentary Assembly of the CE Armenian delegation head Hovhannes Hovhannisian told “Arminfo” agency about it, thus denying Azeri mass media reports about the threat of withdrawal of Armenia from the organization due to failure to fulfill CE requirements. In Hovhannisian’s words, the PACE monitoring commission report on Armenia heard at the session in Paris the day before yesterday was in fact positively evaluated. At the same time a demand was made of the Armenian party to pass a new Criminal Code and ratify 6-th protocol of the European convention on human rights providing for repeal of death penalty. Meanwhile, as asserted by a number of Azeri mass media, just Azeri authorities were criticized at PACE monitoring commission session due to failure to meet the commitments to CE. Moreover, the results of work of CE special sub-commission dealing with problems of political prisoners in the CE member countries including Azerbaijan will be summed up this month. After the sub-commission report CE concrete sanctions in relation to Azerbaijan are expected. Let us remind that harsh criticism has already been addressed to Azerbaijan in PACE this January. If it repeats again this time, the Azeri authorities will again face a dilemma: either they will have to fulfill CE demands, thus finding themselves into an awkward situation, or perfectly abide by their position and lose vote in that influential European structure.
ԻմPANը
