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Azerbaijani Parliament passes decision on restoring relations with European Parliament - UPDATED

Azerbaijani Parliament passes decision on restoring relations with European Parliament - <span style="color: red;">UPDATED

30 September 2016 16:30 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Mubariz Aslanov – APA. The Parliament of Azerbaijan on Friday discussed the draft decision on issues of cooperation between the European Parliament and the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Presenting the draft decision, Samad Seyidov, MP, chairman of the parliamentary Committee on international and interparliamentary relations, said MEPs have officially and unofficially tried to mend relations with Azerbaijan for a year since the European Parliament passed a tendentious decision last year against Azerbaijan, but none of Azerbaijani MPs have contracted them.

“They were just told that they had to make a radical change in their attitude towards Azerbaijan. And we said that if they sought to restore bilateral relations with Azerbaijan, they had to send a European Parliament-mandated delegation. It did happen; an expanded delegation came to Azerbaijan on September 19 this year. The European Parliament had not sent such an expanded delegation to any country,” said the MP.

“The delegation was adopted by Azerbaijan’s president and the meeting was widely covered in the press. There were specific and unbiased discussions which proved the European Parliament’s biased attitude based on documents. The meeting was a turning point,” Seyidov said.

Azerbaijan has never refused to cooperate with any international organization, he added.

“Azerbaijan wants to build a relationship with the European Union at the highest level. However, mutual interests must be respected,” said the MP.

Speaker Ogtay Asadov, in turn, said that some MEPs personally apologized to Azerbaijan for the decision they passed last year

The draft law was then put to the voting and adopted.

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17:35

Baku. Mubariz Aslanov – APA. A draft decision “On cooperation between the European Parliament and Parliament of the Republic of Azerbaijan” was put up for discussion at the parliament’s meeting on September 30.

The draft decision was presented by Samad Seyidov, chairman of the parliamentary Committee on international relations and inter-parliamentary relations.

“The European Parliament has seriously damaged the development of bilateral relations with Azerbaijan by adopting a biased and unfair resolution on Azerbaijan on 10 September 2015,” said the document. “On 14 September 2015, the Azerbaijani Parliament adopted a relevant decision in response to this biased political action aimed at undermining Azerbaijan’s cooperation with the EU and its member states and damaging the country’s international reputation.”

“According to that decision, the Azerbaijani Parliament was to begin fulfilling procedures of terminating its membership of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly and during the procedure the parliament’s delegation was to not join events of the Euronest PA. At the same time, the Azerbaijani Parliament’s participation in activities of the EU-Azerbaijan Parliamentary Cooperation Committee in the current format is to be suspended,” said the document.

According to the document, on 19-21 September 2016, a 15-person delegation of the European Parliament was on a visit to Azerbaijan to discuss the issue of repairing relations.

“They promised to take all necessary measures to make sure relations do not get harmed because of any negative case. In view of all these, the Azerbaijani Parliament considers void the decision dated 14 Sept. 2015, which was aimed at restoring bilateral relations with the European Parliament, and articles 10 and 11,” said the document.

The MPs are discussing the document.