There is a need to set up European integration institution: Azerbaijani parliamentary official

He said it was not difficult for Azerbaijan to cope with Council of Europe monitoring and even some countries that joined the Council of Europe before Azerbaijan are still under the monitoring.

“Monitoring will be conducted until Azerbaijan completely fulfills commitments to the Council of Europe. There are two main laws among the commitments that remains to be fulfilled– draft law on alternative service and convention on languages of ethnic minorities,” he said.

“Regarding the first draft law, it can not be adopted while the state of war continues. There were some financial problems with the second issue. After ratification of this convention, the government should assign huge funds to open schools, TV channels and publish books for ethnic minorities. The situation was normal until the last year and we thought that the problems would be solved soon. But financial crisis delayed the issue. There are still some commitments in the field of court system. It will be solved gradually. This is not a contest that to think who will finish first. Everything should be carried out in time.”

Speaking about the Council of Europe Secretary General’s statement about the arrest of bloggers, Mirzayev said such questions are periodically raised by international organizations.

“Once you get familiar with details of the case, you make sure that the question is only of criminal nature. The criminals should be punished anywhere. We are aware of that statement and now are working on that. We will inform the Council of Europe co-rapporteurs about the essence of the incident”.

Speaking about the proposals to establish parliamentary committees on Karabakh and European integration, Mirzayev said one of them could be established as a commission.

“We need to establish an institution on European integration. It is not necessary to establish it in the form of committee. According to regulations, MP can be member of one committee only. We need to withdraw MPs from other committees to form it which may affect work of other committees. I think we don’t need a committee on Karabakh. We are not working on legislation about Karabakh yet while the main duty of the committee is lawmaking. Karabakh problem is discussed in all committees,” he said.

/APA/