1 of 1
Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
Permanent Council Brief Week 35, 2005
This week was the first Permanent Council week after four weeks of summer recess. During the
recess, a fact worth mentioning was the smooth appointment of a successor to Ambassador
Heyken as Head of the OSCEs Minsk Office. The new Head of Office is Åke Peterson, a former
Swedish Ambassador to Kiev. Meetings of the Permanent Council, the Advisory Committee for
Management and Finance, and the Mediterranean Contact Group took place.
The Permanent Council heard reports by the EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus,
Mr. Heikki Talvitie, the Head of Mission Kosovo Ambassador Werner Wnendt, , and the OSCE
Representative to the Latvian-Russian Joint Commission on Military Pensioners. Under Current
Issues, it discussed the situation in Belarus as well as the one in Georgia, and Belarus reported
that it had signed the Kyoto Protocol.
In the debate on the report on Kosovo, Albania turned out to be the only speaker satisfied with the
state of affairs. The Head of Missions report had an optimistic tendency also, while deploring a
number of severe shortcomings. The reaction of others ranged from harsh criticism, especially
about the lack of political will, the lack of dialogue on the level of political leadership, the situation
of minority populations and internally displaced persons, and the implementation of the decentrali-
zation.
The Secretary General in his report on his activities informed the Permanent Council about the
status of the Afghanistan Election Support Team, which is currently in the process of deployment.
In the Mediterranean Contact Group, ODIHR Director Ambassador Strohal gave an overview over
the preparations for the upcoming Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM) in Warsaw,
and the group got the latest information on next weeks Rabat Mediterranean Seminar. I reminded
them of our Fall Conference in Sveti Stefan.
Next week will see two Special PCs (the regular one is skipped because of the Rabat Conference)
with the Foreign Minister of Serbia and Montenegro, H.E. Vuk Drakovi , and the FM of the Re-
public of Azerbaijan, H.E. Elmar Mammadyarov. The following week, the High-Level OSCE Con-
sultations on the Reform Proposals issued by the Eminent Persons will take place here in Vienna.
Another important upcoming event is the already mentioned HDIM in Warsaw (September 19 until
30).
Andreas Nothelle
September 2, 2005