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Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
Permanent Council Brief Week 25, 2005
The week in Vienna again was a very busy one, with the Annual Security Review Conference
(ASRC), regular meetings of the Permanent Council and its subsidiary bodies, the farewell to
OSCE Secretary General Jan Kubis and an informal briefing offered by PA Secretary General R.
Spencer Oliver for the delegations in Vienna on the upcoming Annual Session in Washington. The
latter coincided with the presentation of the report on the work of the PA’s expert group on reform
to the Chairman-in-Office and the Chair of the Permanent Council, Ambassador Lenarcic. The of-
fice also participated in an International Expert Seminar on Women in Conflict Prevention and Cri-
sis Management offered by the Swedish Delegation.
During the ASRC, the German delegation proposed a three-stage procedure for the time after the
panel of Eminent Persons has come out with its recommendations. The proposal was met with
interest, but several delegations complained that it put too much emphasis on the capitals and left
too little room for input from Vienna. This was countered by one ambassador, who said that the
Emi
nent Persons did not act independently at all, but was more or less processing input from key
delegations. Some also criticized the German keynote speaker for his clear words of criticism
about what he had called a self-inflicted loss of reputation during the last 1 1/2 years. The US
Delegation totally rejected the idea of the OSCE being in a crisis. In the general debate, I briefly
took the floor and reminded the conference of the crucial role Parliamentarians and the PA play in
implementing security strategies, calling for a better involvement, to which the Chair agreed.
In the Permanent Council, no decisions were taken, but long discussions on several items took
place. The main point on the agenda was the presentation of the reports of the three special repre-
sentatives on Tolerance Issues. The presentation again led to a discussion whether in future in
would still make sense to have three representatives as opposed to having only one. Those
against argue that having three different representatives might create the impression of a hierarchy
of tolerance issues, whereas those in favour of maintaining the three say that the issues have dif-
ferent backgrounds and appearances and therefore need different approaches. The Russian dele-
gation complained that the Representative on Anti-Semitism, PA Vice President Prof. Gert Weiss-
kirchen, had taken independent action which this delegation saw as not covered by his mandate.
Under Current Issues, another discussion on the events in Andijan, Uzbekistan, took place, refer-
ring to the preliminary findings by an ODIHR operation. The ODIHR team had not been able to
enter the country and had therefore based its findings on the questioning of refugees. Whereas
many delegations welcomed the action taken by ODIHR and again called for an international in-
vestigation, without this time calling for the “Moscow Mechanism”, others, and in particular Uzbeki-
stan, insisted that ODIHR had by far exceeded its mandate by taking this action without express
authorization by the Permanent Council, and by making political assessments. The findings were
also criticized as being unfair because they relied on witnesses among whom there might have
been many of the insurgents who had started the illegal actions in the country. Also, another de-
bate on the efficiency of the work of the Economic Coordinator took place, as well as farewell bid-
