ArmInfo. The Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland, initiated the issue of termination of Azerbaijan's membership in the Council of Europe personally. Tigran Balayan, spokesman for the Armenian Foreign Ministry, stated during the briefing on June 18.
According to him, the process of termination of Azerbaijan's membership initiated by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe is a long-term process that could theoretically lead to the termination or suspension of the country's membership in the Council of Europe. "The initiator is not the Armenian side, namely the secretariat, the reason is that for many years Azerbaijan has violated its obligations under the Council of Europe, as well as the European Court of Human Rights or did not fulfill them," Balayan said.
Earlier, the representative of Armenia in the European Court of Human Rights, ex-Prosecutor General Gevorg Kostanyan said that on June 6-7, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CMCE) held discussions on the implementation of the ECHR decisions. Among the other verdicts, the agenda included the issue of the implementation of the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Ilgar Mamadov against Azerbaijan. He informed that at this meeting the Armenian side proposed to stop Azerbaijan's membership in the Council of Europe. "We stressed in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe that the policy of Azerbaijan leads to systematic violations of human rights in the territory of the state and against its own people. In the end, we proposed to discuss the issue of depriving Azerbaijan of votes in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, termination of Azerbaijan's membership in the Council of Europe," Kostanyan said. At the same time, he stressed that after the speech of the Armenian delegation more than 20 delegations in their speeches supported this initiative.