Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

A panel of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) approved the final version of a resolution on Azerbaijan's commitments at its meeting on Wednesday in conclusion of discussions.

The adopted document is based on a report by Monitoring Committee co-rapporteurs Pedro Agramunt and Joseph Debono Grech.

"The discussions on the commitments undertaken by Azerbaijan have been held today and the report made by the co-rapporteurs has been adopted at the PACE Monitoring Committee," head of Azerbaijan's delegation to the PACE Samad Seyidov told Azerbaijani news agency APA.

Seyidov participates at the ongoing meeting of the Committee, along with Elkhan Suleymanov, head of the country's delegation to Euronest parliamentary assembly, a body of the European Union's Eastern Partnership program.

Seyidov said all principal addenda and amendments were made to the report and accepted during the discussions due to the persistence of the Azerbaijani side.

"Of course, this report will be discussed in January," he said. "This is just approval on the committee level. But in any case, I must say that at the meeting of the Monitoring Committee, we have witnessed a constructive approach and prevention of biased interference with the report. Many supported the position of Azerbaijan and it shows that lies cannot persist for long. Such attempts have always failed and I am sure that it will always be so."

Seyidov said Azerbaijan will certainly continue making an effort to protect human rights and work on other issues in the future.

"Today, however, the Monitoring Committee has once again shown that the special addenda and amendments made by Elkhan Suleymanov were adopted unanimously. The addenda on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have particular importance among them and they were also passed."

Besides Azerbaijan's long-standing conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, the draft resolution contains clauses on geo-political, social and economic standing of Azerbaijan, the Council of Europe conventions recently signed and ratified by Azerbaijan and the relations between Azerbaijan and the European Union.

The resoution also broadly covers pluralist democracy, legal state-building, human rights and fundamental freedoms in the country.

The final version of the resolution, whose third clause deals with geopolitics and especially the Karabakh conflict, says, "the Assembly acknowledges the geopolitical context of Azerbaijan, situated as it is at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, positioned between the Russian Federation, Iran and Armenia, and inhabited by a population the overwhelming majority of which is Muslim."

The resolution states the Assembly's full awareness of the ongoing conflict with Armenia, which to a large extent dominates the Azerbaijani foreign policy agenda.

"The Assembly regrets that the negotiations have not led, so far, to any tangible results, that the resolutions by the Parliamentary Assembly, the European Parliament, OSCE and the United Nations Security Council have not been implemented up to now," the document noted.