The Council of Europe, which sets standards for human rights, has admitted Armenia and Azerbaijan as its 42nd and 43rd members. That the two countries, which have been involved in a vicious war over the disputed province of Nagorny Karabakh, should enter an international organisation simultaneously, must be regarded as a sign of progress.
There were, however, echoes of that conflict in a speech given by the Azeri President Mr Heydar Aliyev at the Council of Europe's headquarters in Strasbourg. In a long address to the Council, Mr Aliyev accused Armenia of large-scale aggression and said that the international community had watched this "fearful tragedy" in silence.
Armenia's president, Mr Robert Kocharyan, took a more conciliatory line, although his suggestion that the dispute be settled within a larger legal framework and by the need to accept the reality of Nagorny Karabakh, may have left him open to accusations of sophistry from his political opponents.
By extending its membership to countries that were once constituent republics of the Soviet Union, the Council strives to provide the people of those countries with a yardstick against which they can measure progress in the area of human rights.
There are, however, a number of questions to be asked regarding it's policy of admitting countries with poor records in this area. Russia, for example, was admitted to membership at a time when large numbers of its citizens were being deprived of the most basic human entitlement - the right to life. However well meaning the move may have been, the Kremlin interpreted it, at the time, as an endorsement of the first Chechen War.
Neither of the two countries which were admitted yesterday, is a paragon of democracy. Azerbaijan has, in particular, shown little regard for the democratic process. Having taken power in 1993, Mr Aliyev, a former KGB chief and Communist Party first secretary, has remained in control of his country through a series of seriously flawed elections. In the latest poll, in November 2000, his New Azerbaijan Party brazenly engineered the results to ensure that the opposition gained just 13 of the 124 seats in the single-chamber parliament.
Independent monitors were refused admission to polling stations. There was widespread use of false ballot papers and figures issued by the government-controlled election commission showed 70 per cent of the electorate had gone to the polls. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), whose Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), sent observers to the election, put the turnout at below 30 per cent.
There are signs too, that Mr Aliyev is preparing to install his son, Mr Ilham Aliyev, the executive vice-president of the state oil company, as his successor. In the meantime, all the indications suggest that Azerbaijan's accession to membership of the Council of Europe is more likely to be promoted inside the country as international support for the regime rather than as setting out the ground rules for improving civil liberties.