Azerbaijan, Baku, 17 March / Trend corr E. Huseynov / The repeated appointment of the PACE Monitoring Committee's special reporter for political prisoners in Azerbaijan has not been included in the agenda. "Anyway, the issue will not be discussed during the April session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe," Arif Mammadov, Azerbaijan's Ambassador to CE, told Trend on 17 March.
Appointment of the PACE special reporter was exaggerated by the Azerbaijani human rights activists after the issue regarding Azerbaijan's political prisoners was discussed at the PACE Bureau's meeting in Strasburg on 14 March. According to the human rights activists, the decision to appoint a special reporter may be made at the meeting of the PACE Monitoring Committee on 18 March or at the April session of the organization.
"The appointment of the reporter was not even raised at the PACE Bureau meeting due to the 'concrete steps in this field' made by the Azerbaijani authorities," Mammadov said in a telephone conversation from Strasburg. "Therefore, the issue was not included in the agenda. It will not be discussed at the spring session," Mammadov said.
The members of the Monitoring Committee visited Azerbaijan in February. "As the Committee itself deals with the issue, there is no need for the appointment of a special reporter," the diplomat said and added that the Bureau had decided that this issue would be regularly considered by the Monitoring Committee itself.
Azerbaijan made commitments to solve the issue of political prisoners in January 2001 when it was admitted to the Council of Europe. The PACE reporter held his office from 2001 to 2005 after the European human rights activists, together with their Azerbaijani counterparts, developed the list of over 700 political prisoners. At present, the domestic human rights activists say that the list of political prisoners could range from 30 to 100 names.