Azerbaijan not to attend meeting of PACE Bureau and Standing Committee in Yerevan

The Azerbaijani delegation will not attend the meeting of the PACE Bureau and Standing Committee in Yerevan, head of the Azerbaijani delegation to PACE, MP Samad Seyidov told APA.

He did not reveal why the Azerbaijani delegation has refused to participate in the PACE meeting in Yerevan.

The discussions will focus on Armenia's priorities during its Chairmanship and political dialogue between PACE and CoE Committee of Ministers.

Meeting of the PACE Bureau: The agenda includes the decision on proposing that the Assembly open a monitoring procedure for Hungary - in the light of the opinion adopted on 25 April by the Monitoring Committee. The Bureau should also approve the report by its Ad hoc Committee to observe the presidential elections in Montenegro (7 April), which report will be discussed the next day by the PACE Standing Committee. It will discuss the recent early parliamentary elections in Bulgaria and the forthcoming presidential elections in Azerbaijan and Georgia.  Furthermore, it will appoint the third member of the panel for the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize - the panel is made up of the President of the Assembly and six independent experts, three appointed by the Bureau of the PACE and three by the Vaclav Havel Library and the Fondation Charte 77. The Bureau will also update the agenda for the next PACE session (24-28 June).

Meeting of the PACE Standing Committee: PACE President Jean-Claude Mignon will hold high- level meetings in Armenia with the President of the Republic, the Speaker of the National Assembly and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, alongside the meeting of the PACE Standing Committee. The latter has scheduled debates on promoting alternatives to imprisonment, parental leave as a way to foster gender equality, and the budgets and priorities of the Council of Europe for 2014-2015. The PACE UEL Group has requested a current affairs debate on "The Nagorno- Karabakh conflict, 25 years later: the Council of Europe's possibilities to promote reconciliation between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

Armenia assumed chairmanship of the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers on May 16.