The European Stability Initiative published the first part of the study entitled “Cavalry diplomacy: How Azerbaijan silenced the Council of Europe”, which details the chronology and mechanisms for bribing the members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe with the ruling regime of Azerbaijan.
To join the Council of Europe, a country must be both European and democratic. Already in October 1994, PACE declared that “in view of their cultural links with Europe, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia would have the possibility of applying for membership provided they clearly indicate their will to be considered as part of Europe.” Azerbaijan was granted transitional “special guest” status in June 1996. Two weeks later, it submitted an application for full membership.
But was Azerbaijan democratic? For four years, PACE could not decide. In June 2000, the parliamentarians had before them two documents. One was an opinion on Azerbaijan’s application by Georges Clerfayt, a Belgian member. It concluded that Azerbaijan had made “considerable progress” in complying with Council standards, and that there was “momentum” and political will for reform. It also listed the many specific commitments that Azerbaijan would have to accept upon accession. Baku was expected to fully comply with the Council’s monitoring process, to commit itself to a peaceful solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and to tackle the problem of political prisoners. The text also emphasised that the conduct of the upcoming November 2000 elections would serve as a test of Azerbaijan’s commitment to democracy.
The elections were held on 5 November 2000. An observer mission by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) reported that “the vote counting and aggregation of results processes were completely flawed and manipulated.” PACE observers noted “clear manipulation of the electoral procedures. “Since 1994 I have observed 13 elections in 7 countries and this was the worst election fraud I saw. An hour before the opening of the polling station I found 150 completed, signed and stamped ballots for the ruling party in a safe. All day on Sunday only around 350 citizens came to the polling station. In other words, the results were obviously a foregone conclusion.” Andreas Gross, the head of PACE’s election observation mission stated.
On 8 November, Human Rights Watch asked the Committee of Ministers not to admit Azerbaijan. The conduct of the elections, the NGO insisted, showed that Azerbaijan had not met the Council of Europe’s democratic standards. However, on 9 November 2000, Committee of Ministers adopted two nearly identical resolutions inviting both Armenia and Azerbaijan to become members of the Council of Europe.
On 25 January 2001, Azerbaijan joined the Council of Europe, but in this regard, the country began to attract a lot of attention, including the appointment of Georges Clerfight as a special rapporteur on political prisoners in Azerbaijan. The January 2002 PACE session adopted a resolution which welcomed recent presidential pardons but reiterated that the continuing presence of political prisoners in a Council of Europe member state was unacceptable. Andreas Gross also warned that if member states: “do not follow the commitments and values, their membership in the Council is always at stake. We have been open-minded and liberal by admitting [Azerbaijan] and we will be correct and hard in pursuing its commitments. Such a presentation led to the fact that in the summer of 2002 the Azerbaijani delegation to the assembly wrote a letter to PACE President Bruno Haller from France, asking him to replace Andreas Gross with another rapporteur.
The conduct of the October 2003 election–one more occasion for Azerbaijan to prove its democratic credentials, as PACE rapporteurs pointed out – was a disaster. The ODIHR final report listed “widespread intimidation in the pre-election period,” lack of legal remedy for election disputes and complaints and serious flaws in the vote counting and tabulation process. The report concluded that the elections “failed to meet OSCE commitments and other international standards for democratic elections.
In January 2004, the PACE adopted a resolution condemning the arrests of opposition members and the use of force by security forces during protests in Azerbaijan after the presidential elections. However, instead of applying sanctions against Azerbaijan, PACE warned the country that if no progress is achieved, the PACE may be invited to reconsider the ratification of the powers of the Azerbaijani delegation to the Council of Europe. The next test for Azerbaijan was to be the 2005 parliamentary elections. In April 2005, Andreas Gross and the Estonian rapporteur Andres Herkel visited Azerbaijan, after which they said that the situation in the country did not correspond to the norms of democracy, and in view of the opening of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. The revenues generated through the operation of the pipeline, they warned, “might create temptations for some officials and politicians to bypass democracy. The November 2005 elections proved that there was no reason for optimism about Azerbaijan’s democratic progress.
To the great shock of the Azerbaijani opposition, the US Embassy in Baku was one of the first who welcomed the results of the elections. PACE was the last hope for the Azerbaijani opposition, which hoped that the results of the elections would not be recognized. However, the decision on Azerbaijan was postponed until January 2006. At the opening session of the PACE on January 23, 2006, Andreas Gross made a proposal to challenge the powers of the newly elected delegation from Azerbaijan, since the elections held in the country did not meet European standards. Refusal to ratify the powers of the new delegation could become a strong signal to Azerbaijan. In turn, Tony Lloyd, a member of the British Labor Party, said that in case of refusal to apply any sanctions, the reputation of PACE will be dealt a severe blow.
However, proposals on sanctions against Azerbaijan were met with resistance from other delegations. For example, a member of the Russian delegation, Leonid Slutsky, who was a friend of Ilham Aliyev, said that the use of sanctions is a wrong decision. He was supported by British, German and Turkish deputies. All ended with the fact that sanctions against Azerbaijan were never adopted, and PACE was limited to another resolution that criticized the country’s authorities. However, during the visit to the country in late April 2006, the PACE mission found that the demands contained in the resolution had not been fulfilled by Azerbaijan, and the country’s parliament was completely controlled by Ilham Aliyev’s ruling party, Yeni Azerbaijan. PACE Rapporteur on Azerbaijan Andreas Gross had no choice but to give up his post.
Источник: esiweb.org