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 OSCE’s 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 Mission’s 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 week’s 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 Draškovi , 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