30.9.2011

WELCOME BY MR MEVLÜT ÇAVUŞOĞLU,

PRESIDENT OF THE PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY,

TO MR SALIM AL-ZANOON,

SPEAKER OF THE PALESTINIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL

(Strasbourg, Tuesday 4 October 2011)

Dear Speaker,

Dear friend,

I am very happy to welcome you to this House.

The Council of Europe has always defended the views that human rights are universal. Neighbouring countries, by applying to become our partners for democracy, and therefore accepting to defend the same values, confirm those views.

The Parliamentary Assembly has been following with great interest the  developments in the Arab world for the whole of the present year. In its approach, the Council of Europe is not trying to teach any lessons, it is offering to share its accumulated experience and to make available its pertinent mechanisms. Exactly in the same way in which we welcomed the new democracies in Southern Europe in the 1970s and the new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s.

And the same approach was used when the Assembly set up the status of Partner for democracy in 2009, just before the beginning of the Arab Spring.

Dear Speaker, let me praise the PNC for having been the second, after the Moroccan parliament, to request the Partner for Democracy status already in 2010. However, our cooperation was intensive even before then, with Palestinian parliamentarians attending our part-sessions and the meetings of the Political Affairs Committee.

The Palestinian people have to endure a uniquely disadvantageous situation, a situation that cannot be solved by them alone. Yet you were able to develop democratic institutions and today’s vote of this Assembly to grant the partnership status to the Palestinian National Council is an acknowledgement of your achievements.

This also means that we have treated you as any other parliament applying for the status, neither better nor worse, and today’s decision comes with a list of requests that we ask you to comply with. We stand ready to assist you in every way we can.

I am particularly pleased that the granting of this status to the PNC comes at a time when the Palestinian people are seeking recognition of a state in international bodies and I sincerely hope that being a Partner for democracy with the Parliamentary Assembly will help your people to advance further on the path of full statehood. In this context we are all looking forward to the address that President Abbas will deliver to this Assembly the day after tomorrow.

We now hope to welcome, during our next part-session, as well as in our committees, the first Palestinian delegation composed under the terms of the Partner for Democracy status.

Before I give you the floor let me share the good news with my colleagues. I have just received an official request for the Partner for Democracy Status from the Parliament of the Kyrghyz Republic. I am most happy with this development which clearly shows the interest and the potential for developing our relations with our neighbours.

Dear friend, from today this Assembly is also your home. Please make yourself at home. We look forward to listening to you. The floor is yours.