Special Representative

 

 

 

To:

 

PA President

 

and

 

PA Secretary General

 

 

 

 

 

 

Permanent Council Brief Week 18, 2006

 

 

This week, two meetings of the Permanent Council and an Expert Workshop on Urban Transport Security took place. The Advisory Committee for Management and Finance was abroad on its annual information tour.

 

The Permanent Council heard addresses by Mr. Volodymyr Kholosha, Ukrainian Deputy Minister for Emergency Situations and for the Protection of the Population from the Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe, as well as by Professor Mayor and Professor Aydin, Co-Chairs of the United Nations High-Level Group for the Alliance of Civilizations, and the regular report by the Head of Center in Bishkek, Ambassador Markus Müller. Russia condemned the OSCE’s failure to react timely to the cartoon crisis, criticised OSCE’s structures and working mechanisms, and accused the countries “West of Vienna” of not seeing that it was their responsibility to come to viable solutions in order to avoid further clashes of civilizations.

 

Under Current Issues figured the following items: arrests of members of the political opposition in Belarus, death penalty in the United States of America, constitutional reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Sixteenth World Press Freedom Day. The Secretary General’s report referred to the regional meeting of OSCE heads of mission in Central Asia, held in Bishkek on 27 and 28 April 2006, a meeting of the Steering Group on Contingency Planning for Future Institutional Arrangements in Kosovo, held in Vienna on 28 April 2006, and the Summit of the South-East European Cooperation Process, held in Thessaloniki, Greece, on 4 May 2006.

 

Under Any Other Business, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia invited observers to its Parliamentary elections on 5 July 2006 (during the PA’s Annual Session), Ukraine reported about a Seminar on combating trafficking in human beings, held in Kiev on 28 April 2006, and Kazakhstan informed about a Regional conference on combating trafficking in human beings in Central Asia, which will be held in Astana on 18 and 19 May 2006.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Nothelle

Ambassador

May 10, 2006