Azernews.Az

The Council of Europe’s Ago group monitoring Azerbaijan’s commitments to the organization, which has visited Baku, focused on issues pertaining to elections during its discussions. Both this year’s local polls and the 2010 parliamentary elections were mulled, Stelian Stoian, the Ago head and Romanian Ambassador to the CE, told a news conference Wednesday.
According to him, the agenda also included the situation with Azerbaijani media, judiciary and penitentiatry system reform, as well as the state of corruption in the country.
During the visit, the CE officials held meetings with the president, parliament speaker, the head of the presidential administration, leaders of opposition parties, jailed journalists, and NGO representatives.
Azerbaijan’s municipal elections will be held on December 23. 15,682 members will be elected to 1,718 local bodies. About 32,000 candidates have been registered. 18 political parties will be represented at the election, but hopefuls running for the election are members of a total of 30 parties.
Stoian said that during the monitoring visits allow to give a realistic assessment to the situation in a given country. Describing Ago’s initial conclusions, he said: "What we can say at this point is that the Council of Europe intends to continue cooperating with Azerbaijan, given that positive points are being seen here. After our visit to Istanbul we plan to work on projects aimed at securing CE’s support to Azerbaijan."
As an example of progress in enforcing CE obligations Stoian cited the fact that the authorities have for the first time granted permission for posting a report of the Committee against Torture on the CE website on Thursday. Also, improvements have been made in selecting judges and their training; the conditions of detention in jails and other penitentiaries are bettering as well.
According to Stoian, the Ago group also met with two imprisoned journalists - Eynulla Fatullayev, the editor-in-chief of the Realny Azerbaijan and Gundalik Azerbaijan newspapers, and Ganimat Zahid, the editor of opposition newspaper Azadlig; as well as jailed bloggers Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade.
"I can say that we were immediately allowed to meet with them. I think the human rights situation is improving in Azerbaijan," the Ago head said.
Stoian pledged that his organization will work with Azerbaijan until all issues related to CE commitments have been resolved.
"Some points in the country’s legislation have been solved, but there are still outstanding issues on commitments," he added.*