The first current-session meeting of the parliamentary Defence, Security and Counter-Corruption Committee took place on 25 January.

The committee chairman Ziyafet Asgarov announced on starting the proceedings that the agenda contained the 2021 autumn session performance report and the work plan for the spring session of 2022.

As for the report that was tabled first, Mr Asgarov mentioned the 21 committee meetings held to process 8 matters last session, amongst them the Ratification Bill of the Azerbaijan Republic regarding the Memorandum of Understanding between the Governments of the Azerbaijan Republic and the Republic of Turkey ‘On the Training of the Special Operations Forces of the Army of Azerbaijan and the Armed Forces of Turkey’, a set of draft amendments to the Law ‘On the Compulsory Personal State Insurance of the Military Personnel’ and several other drafts. The MPs on the committee were actively involved in the debates on the 2022 State Budget Bill as well. The committee organised a string of conferences honouring the first anniversary of our brilliant victory in the Patriotic War and encounters with the war gazies and veterans. The legislators were reacting promptly to in-country and global developments and were active in the mass media, according to Mr Asgarov.

Mr Asgarov’s deputy Hikmat Mammadov and MP Elman Mammadov said in their commentaries that the past period had been fruitful and that the MPs had not only worked in the realm of legislation but had also been active publicly and responded to defence and security issues in the press. The speakers commended the current successful building and re-building work that goes on in the liberated provinces of the country, besides.

The 2021 autumn session performance account of the committee was endorsed eventually.

Whilst describing the work plan for the current session, Mr Asgarov drew the listeners’ attention to the intent to consider the draft laws that will be arriving by way of the legislative initiatives of various offices as well as to process amendments to the effective laws and, alongside those, to consider and generalise proposals coming in from various departments and from citizens. The plan includes the Military Servicemen’s Status Law, which had been drawn up to high standards and has evoked favourable responses from the specialist government departments, by the way, according to Mr Asgarov.

The meeting participants approved and adopted the work plan then.

Next, the committee looked at the first-reading set of amendments to the Law ‘On the Armed Forces of the Azerbaijan Republic’ wherein the new-edit Article 9.6 says that the procedures for dedicated separate supply and equipment provisions for the Army and the other uniformed branches, in peacetime and at war (armed conflicts), shall be defined and imposed by the concerned executive authority body. The Bill is based on the experience gathered during the battles for the territorial integrity of the country from 27 September till 10 November 2020, and is devised to make sure that the material arrangements set the highest standards for every and all branches.

It was recommended, after Elman Mammadov and Arzu Naghiyev stressed the document’s significance for army modernisation, to table the first-reading Bill at a plenary sitting of the Milli Majlis.

Incidentally, the other committee members Aghil Abbas, Amina Agazade, Ogtay Asadov, Nurlan Hasanov, Elshad Mirbashir oglu, Aydin Mirzazade and Bakhtiyar Sadigov were participating in the meeting as well.

The Press and Public Relations Department
The Milli Majlis