Monitoring Prolonged to January

Members of the Ukrainian parliamentary delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have their doubts that canceling of monitoring regime at the Assembly’s session in January 2001 is possible, reports Interfax Ukraine. In part, at the October 1 press conference in Kyiv SDPU(o) representative Vasyl Kostytsky (incidentally, 205 of the 596 PACE deputies are social democrats) noted that there are “formal” reasons to end monitoring and start a “post-monitoring dialog,” since Ukraine has met the great majority of its obligations to the Council of Europe.

Simultaneously, he also casts doubts upon the chance of ending the monitoring, since, as he put it, Ukraine will not be able to settle questions concerning the Gongadze case and certain other problems before the Assembly’s session in January. Meanwhile all the deputies of the parliamentary delegation taking part in the press conference regard the PACE decision on Ukrainian question as positive and optimal.

Let us recall that according to the PACE resolution of September 27, if Ukraine fulfills some of its still unfulfilled obligations to the Council of Europe before its January session, the assembly will end its formal monitoring procedure, while continuing its dialogue with Ukraine within the framework of a broader monitoring process.