15/05/2004 | President
Parliamentary Assembly President Peter Schieder today condemned torture against the background of reports of abuse of prisoners by American and British troops in Iraq. “The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom are responsible under international law for the well-being of prisoners in their custody. Cases tantamount to torture as reported by the International Committee of the Red Cross and others constitute a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention,” he said.
14/05/2004 | Culture, Science, Education and Media
Paschal Mooney (Ireland, LDR), rapporteur on the Media of the Assembly’s Committee on Culture, Science and Education, will participate as a panellist in the World Congress of the International Press Institute in Warsaw from 17 to 18 May. He will join representatives from Unesco, the OSCE and the Organization of American States on Monday 17 May for a discussion on the theme: “holding member states of international governmental organisations to their press freedom commitments”.
14/05/2004 | Monitoring
Andreas Gross (Switzerland, SOC), co-rapporteur for the monitoring of Azerbaijan, makes on 19-20 May a fact-finding visit to the country to assess the state of Azerbaijan’s honouring of the obligations and commitments it undertook on joining the Council of Europe in 2001. In a January 2004 resolution, the Assembly said progress was “far from satisfactory”. Mr Gross will meet with the Azerbaijani authorities as well as representatives of opposition parties, human rights organisations and journalists.
14/05/2004 | Equality and Non-Discrimination
The Assembly’s Committee on Equal Opportunities will hold a parliamentary hearing on “a campaign to combat domestic violence in Europe” in Prague on 24 May, with the participation of the Czech authorities and NGOs. Jean-Guy Branger (France, EPP/CD) is preparing a report on the subject.
14/05/2004 | Monitoring
Josette Durrieu (France, SOC) and André Kvakkestad (Norway, EDG), co-rapporteurs on Moldova for the Assembly’s Monitoring Committee, make from 23 to 25 May a fact-finding visit to the country to assess the state of Moldova’s honouring of the commitments it made on joining the Council of Europe in 1995.
14/05/2004 | Monitoring
Evgeni Kirilov (Bulgaria, SOC), one of the two rapporteurs on Georgia of the Assembly’s Monitoring Committee, will take part in a conference on "The constitutional organisation of the state", organised in Tbilisi from 18 to 19 May by the Council of Europe's Venice Commission and the Georgian Constitutional Court.
14/05/2004 | Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Daniel Goulet (France, LDR), who is preparing a report for the Assembly’s Committee on the Environment, Agriculture and Local and Regional Affairs on “the potential adverse consequences of the Oil Pool D-6 operation”, visits Kaliningrad,Vilnius and Nida from 19 to 20 May to meet Russian and Lithuanian authorities as well as local environmental organisations. The D-6 operation is a planned oil extraction platform in the Baltic close to the Curonian Spit, a Unesco World Heritage listed site which straddles both Lithuanian and Russian territory.
14/05/2004 | President
Assembly President Peter Schieder wrote to Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev welcoming the decision to pardon 363 prisoners, some of whom are considered as political prisoners by the Assembly.“As with the previous amnesty decrees, this is a step in the right direction, and brings Azerbaijan closer to fulfilling a key commitment it made on joining the Council of Europe three years ago,” wrote Mr Schieder. “The Assembly has stressed many times that there can be no political prisoners in a Council of Europe member state.”
13/05/2004 | Political Affairs and Democracy
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan are aware of the urgency of resolving their conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region due to its far-reaching negative humanitarian, political and economic consequences, said Political Affairs Committee rapporteur Terry Davis today. He was speaking following meetings in Strasbourg on 13 May with the Foreign Ministers of both countries and the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, who thanked him for his earlier visits to the region and his support. Mr Davis is preparing a report on the conflict for debate by the Assembly before the autumn.
12/05/2004 | Bureau
Assembly President Peter Schieder has sent a letter to Stéphane Valéri, President of the National Council of Monaco, informing him of the Assembly Bureau’s decision to grant the Monaco Parliament special guest status with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Monaco will therefore be able to occupy two seats in the Assembly from the summer plenary session (21-25 June 2004) onwards. The Bureau’s decision follows Opinion 250 (2004) on the Principality of Monaco’s application for membership of the Council of Europe, adopted by the Assembly on 27 April 2004.
10/05/2004 | President
“The Assembly strongly condemns yesterday’s bomb attack in Grozny in which the President of the Chechen Republic Akhmad Kadyrov was killed,” Assembly President Peter Schieder wrote today in a letter to Sergey Mironov, President of the Council of the Russian Federation, and to Duma President Boris Gryslov. He extended his condolences, on behalf of the Parliamentary Assembly, to the families of those who died in the attack.
10/05/2004 | President
More than 50 Speakers and presidents of parliament from across Europe, as well as the heads of some ten European parliamentary assemblies, gather in Strasbourg from 17 to 19 May 2004 for a parliamentary summit on the theme “Europe of citizens: parliaments and participation of citizens”.