The Secretary General _________________ Raadhusstraede 1, 1466 Copenhagen K., Denmark Phone: +45 33 37 80 40   -   Fax: +45 33 37 80 30   -   E-mail OSCE@oscepa.dk -   Website: www.oscepa.org Mario di Napoli The Delegation of Italy to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Camera dei Deputati Via del Seminario 76 00186 Rome Italy Copenhagen, 26 May 2005 Dear Mario, I have received a copy of the letter you have sent to all Secretaries of Delegations along with Mr. Kessler’s letter and proposed amendments to the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure.  I must say that I was rather surprised by the text, bearing in mind the discussion of similar proposals put forward by Mr. Kessler at the Expanded Bureau Meeting in April.  At this meeting, you were informed that the text presented by Mr. Kessler contained several serious errors which you had agreed should be corrected.  Unfortunately, the new proposal is even worse than the original.    First of all, the suggestion that Mr. Kessler’s amendments would bring the Assembly “in line with the corresponding provisions of other international Assemblies, such as the NATO Parliamentary Assembly” (the Russian version distributed by Mr. Kessler and Barbara Haering’s assistant in Tromsø also mentioned the Western European Union Assembly and the Council of Europe Assembly) is simply not correct.  There are no term limits on the Secretaries General of the CoE Assembly, the WEU Assembly, or the IPU.  The NATO Assembly limits the Secretary General to six two-year terms, and has recently been changed to allow a 4- year term beyond that limit.   Secondly, the amendment to bring the staff regulations in the Assembly “in line with the provisions set for OSCE personnel shall be adopted for the Secretary General and Secretariat staff”, would virtually destroy the Assembly Secretariat, causing the immediate departure of me, Vitaly Evseyev, Tina Schøn, Jan Jooren, Gustavo Pallares, Kurt Andersen-Lerras, and three other Danes in critical positions at our small Secretariat.  As I told you in Copenhagen, this would be a catastrophe for the Assembly and is certainly not the way in which the Secretariats of all the other

The Secretary General _________________ Raadhusstraede 1, 1466 Copenhagen K., Denmark Phone: +45 33 37 80 40   -   Fax: +45 33 37 80 30   -   E-mail OSCE@oscepa.dk -   Website: www.oscepa.org international Assemblies are organized.  Since the Membership of the various Assemblies changes frequently, the International Secretariats provide the continuity needed to build an institutional memory and established practices.  In addition, the idea of applying the OSCE Staff Regulations, which are 174 pages in length and cover thousands of employees, to a small staff of fourteen in Copenhagen would obviously be unworkable and would create an unreasonable administrative burden.   You should also know that even the OSCE Secretary General and the Heads of OSCE Institutions have criticized these OSCE Staff Regulations regarding length of service as being unworkable and very damaging to the professional competency of the Organization.  And, of course, no other international organizations or Parliamentary Assemblies have such regulations, nor are they even considering such restrictions.  I was therefore not surprised to learn that Mr. Kessler told President Hastings –  who opposes these amendments –  that he was having great difficulty in obtaining any support from Heads of Delegations. We will, of course, translate the amendments into the six official OSCE languages when they are submitted with eleven signatures from three countries.   Since this is such an easy requirement we are a little surprised that no signatures have yet been received at the International Secretariat. Since the documents you have distributed contain several errors as well as a misunderstanding of the history of the development of the Rules of Procedure which were adopted unanimously by the Standing Committee, I attach an internal   memorandum which I had prepared prior to the Copenhagen meeting.  I hope it will be helpful. Sincerely, R. Spencer Oliver cc:  Secretaries of Delegations