On May 20, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council...

On May 20, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe decided to recommend that the Assembly should suspend the credentials of the Ukrainian delegation because Ukraine did not respect its commitments on the death penalty. The Chairman of the Ukrainian Supreme Council, Adam Martynyuk, said Ukraine had done everything it could to fulfill the undertakings made in 1995. He also said that Parliament would not dare to vote for a ban on the death penalty because people have quite different opinions on the issue. Martynyuk thought it illogical that the Council of Europe was not demanding the same of Turkey, whose legislation provided for the death penalty; nor was it intending to exclude Russia. Martynyuk did not rule out the possibility that somebody in the Council of Europe wanted to use Ukraine "to teach a lesson."