Initiative of Andreas Gross found no support

At the first day sitting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) session the PACE co-rapporteur on Azerbaijan Andreas Gross came out with the speech, in which he proposed not to approve the mandate of the Azerbaijan delegation to PACE "due to the incompliance of the 6 November parliamentary elections to the Council of Europe (CE) standards," Trend reports citing the PACE Secretariat in Strasbourg.

"The elections in Azerbaijan were not democratic due to which the issue of the mandate approval is to be discussed at the PACE Committee of Regulations and Powers," Gross said.

A leader of the Azerbaijan delegation to PACE Samed Seyidov, in his turn, came out with the objections, noting the issue is to be discussed by the PACE Monitoring Committee.

"The parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan passed fully in line with the world standards. The entire voting process was transparent and democratic," Seyidov said.

On the results of discussions a decision on considering the Azerbaijan delegation mandate issue at the PACE Monitoring Committee scheduled for Wednesday, 25 January 2006 was taken.

The agenda of the session today’s sitting includes such issues as elections of the PACE president and vice-president, appointment of the committee members, discussion of special procedures, freedom of media in Russian Federation, location of the US secret prisons in Europe, unrests in European cities and the CE response for this, as well as the situation in Belarus.