1 of 1 Special Representative To: PA President and PA Secretary General Permanent Council Brief Week 37, 2005 This week was marked by the High Level Consultations on the recommendations of the Panel of Emi- nent Persons on Strengthening the OSCE. Deputy Secretary General Tina Schön led the PA deleg a- tion. There were also meetings of the Permanent Council, the Asian Contact Group, the PrepCom and the Advisory Committee for Management and Finance. Furthermore, we hosted a group of Parliamen- tary Staff from Armenia who participate in this year’s seminar organized by the Mission in Yerevan. In the High Level Consultations, as anticipated, delegations presented lists of what they would like to have and what they would like to prevent from happening, which made a direct discussion practically impossible. On the other hand, with the help of the Secretariat, it should be possible to draw up a roster of items on which they are coming close to an agreement. Several delegations referred to the Parlia- mentary Assembly and its recommendations in their statements, without being very concrete. The Bela- rusian Chief Delegate from Minsk stated that Belarus was not at all of the opinion that the Parliamentary Assembly is useful and should be better involved. At the end of the two-day meeting, the Chairmanship presented a list of items that are to be discussed in a newly created Working Group on Strengthening the Efficiency of the OSCE under the Slovenian chairmanship before Ljubljana. The US and Russia expressed optimism about the expected outcome of the work in the group. I was allowed to take the floor only at the beginning of the closing session, together with Korea as representative of the Asian and Algeria as representative of the Mediterranean Partners, being the first time that the Mediterranean Partners agreed on a common text and acted as a group including Israel. The PA Colloquium's recom- mendations as well as my statement are made available on the Delegates' Website in the folder on the High Level Consultations. The main item on the Permanent Council’s agenda was the regular report on Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Head of Mission. Under Current Issues, Belarus expressed its deep concern about the latest riots in Ulster, UK, asking for the OSCE to debate and act on this. Another issue, equally raised by Bel- arus, was a Lithuanian storage facility for nuclear waste close to their common border. The Chairman- ship expressed its concern about the stalemate on the Scales of Contribution, on which an agreement should ideally have been found before the end of September. Other issues under this agenda item were the UK elections and the latest decree by the Kazakh President calling for free and fair elections. In the Contact Group with the (Asian) Partners for Cooperation, the Partners expressed their dis- appointment that they had not been allowed to attend the High Level Consultations, except for the con- cluding session. The Group also discussed the upcoming elections in Afghanistan and OSCE reform. The next Asia-OSCE Conference will be held in Thailand end of April 2006. On October 4, 15:00 hrs, there will be a Special Permanent Council for the Address by the Parliamen- tary Assembly President. Next week and the following week, most of the ambassadors will move to Warsaw for the HDIM. Andreas Nothelle Ambassador September 21, 2005