Azerbaijani delegates leave for France to attend PACE summer session

The Azerbaijani delegation led by Samed Seidov, chairman of the permanent parliamentary commission on international relations and inter-parliamentary ties and head of the Azerbaijani delegation in PACE, left on June 21 for France to attend the summer session of the organization to start on June 23-27 in Strasbourg.

Novosti-Azerbaijan reports with reference to the press service for Azerbaijan's Milli Medjlis that the delegation included Milli Medjlis members, represented in PACE.

The summer session will start its work on Monday morning. The session will start with the speech of the Foreign Ministry of Sweden, currently chairing the organization, Carl Bildt.

The session participants will hold discussions of the functioning of the democratic institutions in Turkey, to be attended by the Foreign Minister of this country; overall political discussion of the stats in China and special session on the state of democracy in Europe to hear the speeches of the NGOs representatives.

President of Serbia Boris Tadich will also speak at the session on June 26.

Among other topics to be discussed is the struggle with Black Sea pollution, expanding role of women in the modern multicultural society and abandonment of children by their parents. Also the sides plan to discuss issue of functioning of democratic institutions in Armenia at an urgent meeting.

According to the CE press service, a report "On functioning of democratic institutions in Azerbaijan" will be heard on the second day of the session on June 24.

The document (No 11627) is developed by PACE co-rapporteurs on Azerbaijan Andreas Herkel (Estonia) and Eugenia Zhivkova (Bulgaria). The document is worked out by results of their recent visit to Baku and was discussed beforehand at the session of the PACE Monitoring Committee, held in Kiev on May 27.

According to co-rapporteurs, the document, consisting of 38 pages with 168 regulations and annexes, is a kind of a road map for authorities towards opposition before the presidential elections in Azerbaijan to be held in October of 2008.