Ad hoc committee to discuss proposals on Russia's return to PACE on Mar 16 - Kuleba
A generalized document containing proposals to return the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will be presented at the next meeting of the PACE's ad hoc committee on reform, to be held in Paris on March 16, Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe Dmytro Kuleba has said.
"The meeting [of the ad hoc committee] will be held in Paris on March 16. The idea is the following. Before February 15, all members of the ad hoc committee can submit their proposals for discussion on those issues that are included in the agenda. A generalized document will be presented on March 16, with proposals that concern not only the return of Russians. There are several topics there, and all this in a beautiful wrapper has a provisional title 'PACE reform,'" he told the Segodnya daily newspaper published on Friday.
According to him, a general list of proposals will be presented on March 16 and the list will be discussed. Ukraine will be represented at a meeting of the ad hoc committee by Volodymyr Ariev, the head of the Ukrainian delegation to the PACE and a Bloc of Petro Poroshenko MP, and the Ukrainian delegation has already begun preparing its proposals.
At the same time, Kuleba noted that Russia also has the right to submit its proposals, although it is not a full-fledged member of the committee, but only an invited guest.
"So, the general document should be discussed on March 16. Then there will be another meeting in Strasbourg on April 23-27, where, I think, they will already try to identify priority changes and will work to find support for the return of Russians," he said.
He noted that the states that oppose Russia's unconditional return to the PACE will would to counteract actual collusion, and this requires appropriate tactics of behavior.
"It seems that we have collusion of elites in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Russia's unconditional return. That is, there are a certain number of people belonging to the governing bodies of the Council of Europe and the PACE who agreed to coordinate their efforts and will try to ensure the return of Russia," Kuleba said.
