PACE Team Visits Tbilisi, Moscow

A group of lawmakers from the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) is visiting Moscow and Tbilisi on September 22-25, ahead of emergency debates on the Russo-Georgian war in late September and early October.

The nine-member group, led by Luc Van den Brande of Belgium, will meet Russian officials and human rights and humanitarian organizations in Moscow on September 22-23 and Georgian officials and international organizations in Tbilisi on September 24-25.

“The delegation is also due to visit Tskhinvali and other villages in South Ossetia and the so-called buffer zone,” according to a Council of Europe press release.

On September 12 a group of 24 members of PACE submitted a request for the reconsideration of the credentials of the Russian delegation to PACE ahead of the Assembly’s plenary session in Strasbourg planned for September 29-October 3.

The group demanded reconsideration of the Russian delegation’s credentials “on the grounds of serious violations of the basic principles of the Council of Europe mentioned in the Preamble to the Statute.”

The PACE Committee on Rules and Procedures must discuss the request on the first day of the plenary session, on September 29; then the Committee will report to the Assembly about its conclusions and the latter will decide the matter by majority vote.

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