Newly appointed chairman of the COE Committee of Ministers, Foreign Minister of Norway Jan Petersen delivered a summary report on the PACE session, June 22. According to existing rules, following the summary report chairman of the Committee of Ministers is questioned. These questions are presented to the secretariat for a day and then published. In the course of the session, following chairman’s answer deputy who asked the first question is enabled to question once more.

18 European deputies questioned J. Peterson this time. The first question was asked by Azerbaijani deputy Rafael Huseynov. The question says: how may the contribution of the Council of Europe to the resolution of conflicts be evaluated? What steps can be taken to settle conflicts existing in the Caucasus region?

Mr. Jan Petersen stressed in responce that the Caucasian region is always in the focus of attention of the Council of Europe and noted that he would handle problems of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia and visit the region.

Taking the opportunity, the Azerbaijani deputy drew the Chairman’s attention to Armenia’s aggression against Azerbaijan. R. Huseynov noted that whenever the issue of COE’s active participation in the resolution of the conflict is raised, it points to lack of mandate to settle the conflict since the OSCE Minsk Group is directly involved in the issue. When asked about the approach and efforts towards information exchange between COE and OSCE, in particular, Minsk Group, and conflict resolution J. Petersen stated that he would do his best for the settlement of the conflict.