17 June 2005
Washington, D.C.
The Hon. Giovanni Kessler
Member, Italian Chamber of Deputies
Vice President, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly
Montecitorio
00186 Roma
Italy
Dear Vice President Kessler:
I am in receipt of your most recent letter to me of 10 June. First, let me apologize
for the short delay in my response. As you know, I take great pride in the speed in which
I am typically able to respond to you. As you can imagine, however, with the
approaching Washington Conference, we have been very busy.
Thank you for taking note of the recommendation to appoint a Rules Sub-
committee which I, along with other Members of the Expanded Bureau, suggested when
we were in Copenhagen in April.
As you are no doubt aware, I have already appointed the members of the Sub-
committee and they are scheduled to meet prior to the 1 July Standing Committee
meeting. As promised, the Sub-committee is well-balanced ideologically,
geographically, and by gender.
As I have already explained to you in my last correspondence, I did not request
that the Secretary General send to you and others his memorandum. As I have also
already explained, however, there was nothing substantively wrong with his
memorandum. In fact, the Secretary General made his case convincingly, succinctly, and
with great clarity and wisdom.
Mr. Kessler, this has been the pattern of the work of the Secretary General and his
exceptional staff over the past decade. In my more than forty years of being an attorney,
judge, and Member of Congress, I have seldom— if ever— come across an organization
that is run as efficiently as the PA’s Secretariat. The staff, from top to bottom, does more
work, both in quantity and quality, better than organizations with three to four times the
number of staff and ten times the budget.
Your frequent and repeated attacks on the Secretary General and his team in
Copenhagen are as misguided as they are mean-spirited. More importantly, however,
these attacks are a disservice to our Assembly and take away time and energy that could