The Parliamentary session of the Counil of Europe that will open at the Strasbourg headquarters today at 3 pm until January 27th, has attracted the political attention of the whole continent. The points on the agenda include "alleged secret jails in the member states of the Council", the "need for an international condemnation of the crimes committed by the Communist totalitarian regimes", the "fight against the reinstatement of the Nazi ideology", the "breaches of human rights in the Chechen Republic". But above all official speeches are expected from such international celebrities as: José Manuel Durao Barroso, president of the EU Commission; Traian Basescu, president of Romania and leader of the Ministers’ Committee for six months; Serguei Stanishev, Prime Minister of Bulgaria. The Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Terry Davis, will have to speak of the yearly results of the organisation, founded in 1949, which mostly deals in the defence of human rights (the CoE works in close cooperation with the Human Rights Court of Strasbourg), European culture and integration. Jan Eliasson, president of the UN General Assembly, will take part in a debate on the "Parliamentary dimension of the UN". Finally, the agenda includes a collective discussion on "the situation in Belarus just before the presidential elections", to be attended by Vladimir Konoplev, president of the Belarussian House of Representatives, and Alexander Milinkevich, the opposition leader.
