High delegations from the Council of Europe to visit Azerbaijan

The Council of Europe information centre in Azerbaijan has informed the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that Andreas Gross and Andres Herkel, co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Monitoring Committee on Azerbaijan, are arriving with a two-day visit today.

Tomorrow, May 26, the co-rapporteurs will start their official meetings. They plan to meet representatives of the General Prosecutor's Office, the MIA, the Ministry of Justice, the CEC, as well as with members of the parliamentary delegation of Azerbaijan to PACE. On May 27, the co-rapporteurs plan to meet with representative of political parties and NGOs and visit Farkhad Aliev, ex-minister of economic development, at the pre-trial prison of the MNS. Upon the results of the visit, the co-rapporteurs are going to prepare a report on the election situation in Azerbaijan which will be discussed at the PACE session in Strasburg at the end of June. Additionally, the information centre reports that, on June 13, the monitoring "Ago Group" of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CE) is coming to Baku. The group members will stay in Baku till June 14 and hold a number of meetings with representatives of authorities, political parties and non-government organizations of Azerbaijan.

For reference, the previous visit of the group members to Azerbaijan took place in June last year. Belgian Bribossia, special representative of the CE Secretary General in Baku, will set to work on June 15, 2006.