YEREVAN. – Azerbaijan cannot issue an international warrant, they can declare that they want to arrest me and then they would have to require international police authorities to make this happen, member of the European Parlianent Frank Engel told Armenian News-NEWS.am correspondent.

“This is not going to happen because the fact they want me for and my other colleagues for, are only relevant to the Azeri law. In no other territory of this globe it is acceptable that you should prosecute or arrest somebody who traveled to a certain place – something that only Azerbaijan does,” Mr. Engel said commenting on Azerbaijani media reports.

Earlier on Thursday Azerbaijan prosecutor’s office made a statement saying they issued “an international arrest warrant for European Parliament members Frank Engel (Luxembourg), Eleni Theocharous (Cyprus) and Jaromír Štětina (Czech Republic) for visiting Karabakh”.

Asked about his further actions, MEP said they will have to quietly assess what to, but added that Azerbaijan is doing this “for the reasons of their own.”

“There has been a lot in the last weeks and months that has not been played in their favor and they probably again want to distract attention from the domestic problems, but we are obviously going to defend ourselves against this sort of behavior,” he added.

The MEP said he expects a comment of the European Parliament “because it does not happen every day that three members of this house are wanted for arrest” by a country that is engaged in normal relations and even negotiates agreements with EU.  Mr. Engel added that the regime in Azerbaijan is responding to the fact that “we criticized their human rights record on numerous occasions” and “we will have to say something about it.”