Strasbourg, 2 January 1997 (RFE/RL) - Representatives from 20 East European nations and former Soviet republics are due to attend a conference next week in Moscow on public prosecution in democracies.
The two-day meeting of jurists and lawyers is being sponsored by the Council of Europe and Russia's General Prosecutor's Office. It will focus on the development of democratic practices in public prosecutors' offices in reforming former communist states.
The conference is part of a joint program of the Council of Europe and the European Union's Executive Commission. The program is designed to strengthen human rights protection mechanisms and aid in the reform of the legal system in the Russian Federation.
The 20 participating nations are: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine.