Report on Azerbaijan's commitments is ready for debate in PACE April session, Andres Herkel says

He mentioned that Azerbaijani government is cooperating with the Venice Commission on these issues.

"We know that the government is cooperating with the Venice Commission with regard to these issues. But we considered it important to mention these issues in the report, and think that relevant laws should be adopted by the presidential elections," the co-rapporteur told the APA.

Andres Herkel said that there were a number of positive points during the discussion of the report.

"Among them we can mention release of some political prisoners with the president's pardon decree, restoration of Azadliq newspaper. As to the problem of political prisoners, we are concerning ourselves with these people. It was decided that the problem should be solved through amnesty. I mentioned these problems while meeting with the representatives of the government and NGOs. I understand the proposal on appointing special rapporteur on political prisoners, but it would not be right to say that the working group's activity is unproductive after the recent pardon decree. I always say if we see that the working group solves all problems, there will be no need for a special rapporteur. Besides, it is difficult to say whether a new rapporteur will be able to solve this problem," he underlined.

Andres Herkel is satisfied that Azerbaijan has presented its remarks on the report in time.

"The report is ready for discussion in April session. As to the remarks, they are explanations rather than facts. We did not include recent incident between Azerbaijani parliamentarians into the main part of the report. We just noted that such incident happened, and we will wait for Azerbaijan's explanation of it. The incident was not discussed in today's debate," he concluded.