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Tuesday, 26 October 2004

PACE DELEGATION ASSESSES SITUATION IN GEORGIA

Published in News Digest

By empty (10/26/2004 issue of the CACI Analyst)

A visiting delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has raised various human rights issues during a four-hour meeting with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania. Topics discussed included corruption and the repatriation to Georgia of the Meskhetians deported on Soviet leader Josef Stalin\'s orders in 1944. Georgia pledged on admission to the Council of Europe in 2000 to allow all Meskhetians who wish to do so to settle in Georgia by 2010.
A visiting delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has raised various human rights issues during a four-hour meeting with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania. Topics discussed included corruption and the repatriation to Georgia of the Meskhetians deported on Soviet leader Josef Stalin\'s orders in 1944. Georgia pledged on admission to the Council of Europe in 2000 to allow all Meskhetians who wish to do so to settle in Georgia by 2010. The PACE delegation also met with detained former Interior Minister Koba Narchemashvili and with former Control Chamber head Sulkhan Molashvili, whose condition gives grounds for concern, according to PACE delegation member Josette Durrieu. Meanwhile, the Council of Armenian Public Organizations of Djavakheti has alerted PACE to what it termed the \"critical situation\" in that predominantly Armenian-populated region of southern Georgia. The council claimed that Georgia has still not fulfilled its obligations to the Council of Europe with regard to the rights of national minorities. It also claimed that due to discriminatory laws, the majority Armenian population is not adequately represented on local councils. (Caucasus Press)
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