The Council of Europe and its Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) have never solved any international problem, Dr Jakub Korejba, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Eurasian Studies (AVİM), a Polish political scientist and journalist, exclusively told News.Az.
Commenting on Azerbaijan’s decision to cease its engagement with and presence at the PACE, the Polish political scientist stressed that this organization has never given any example of a positive impact on international relations.
“This is a structure, an institution that only has sense if it is a place to exchange opinions and where the dialogue of all its members takes place. The PACE has no right and mandate to decide whether any state is internally organized by the organization’s will. This organization has to accept the fact of a very simple existence of states which delegate their parliament members to express their point of view,” he said.
“What the PACE is doing now is denying the right of Azerbaijani representatives to express their own position,” said Korejba, noting that the organization wants Azerbaijan to have a different position than it really has.
“If Azerbaijan was to meet the PACE’s requirements, its representatives would have to simply lie and reject the position they really demonstrate, would have to act and speak in a way that does not express the national interests of Azerbaijan. This is not what we can call dialogue. This is lecturing an object by a subject. This is something absolutely contradictory to what the dialogue is,” he added.
The Polish political analyst stated that he had never expected the PACE to find a solution to any problem.
“The value of PACE meetings would be that all sides listen to each other. However, this doesn’t happen and one side doesn’t want to listen to the views of the other sides,” said Korejba, emphasizing that all this is testimony to the senselessness of the organization.
According to the political scientist, all European countries are different and those differences express the political, economic, social, cultural, and historical reality. “If French or German delegations to the PACE expect other countries to be something different than they really are, this is totalitarian, colonial, and imperialist thinking. This is illegal because the PACE has no right to tell other countries and its member states how they should formulate their interests. This is also politically counterproductive because Europe has many problems inside.”
As for the ongoing developments in the South Caucasus, the Polish political scientist said peace is about to be established in the region thanks to Azerbaijan.
“Such a move by the PACE is not peacemaking but an attempt to provoke a new conflict. It is not a quest for a bilateral solution between Azerbaijan and Armenia. It is a quest for another conflict,” he said.
Korejba said he thinks everyone in Europe should be grateful to Azerbaijan for resolving the years-long Karabakh conflict. “Everyone in Europe should be happy and thank Azerbaijan that the fact of occupation and separatism has already been eliminated in the South Caucasus, which is a very crucially important region for the entire Europe,” he added.
He noted that provoking a new conflict in the region is suicidal.
“A possible new conflict in the South Caucasus will result in numerous losses. Europe should also realize that without cooperation with the South Caucasus, it will continue to plunge into a very deep crisis. A suicidal logic is bad for Europe as a whole, and for all PACE members after what happened today, this organization cannot be perceived as a serious force. All this shows that France, Germany and other imperialist countries may provoke absolutely unnecessary conflicts,” the Polish political scientist concluded.
