Special Representative

 

 

To:

 

PA President

 

and

 

PA Secretary General

 

 

 

 

 

Permanent Council Brief Week 20, 2007

 

 

Since the last Parliamentary Assembly Bureau Meeting, a number of meetings of the Permanent Council, the FSC, both Contact Groups, the Preparatory Committee and the Advisory Committee for Management and Finance, have taken place, and the new Chairman-in-Office, Finnish FM Alexander Stubb, has made his presentation.

 

However, important decisions have only been taken by the last two PCs. This week, the PC has adopted the Scales of Contribution, which will be valid for the next two years and make it finally possible for the OSCE to bill the participating States. Last week, the PC had adopted a draft decision on the appointment of a new director for the ODIHR, which has been approved by the Ministers in a silence procedure that ended this week. Starting from July 1, the new Director will be 40-year-old Ambassador Janez Lenarčič from Slovenia, in 2005 Chairman of the PC and currently Secretary of State for European Affairs. Apart from that, discussions in the PC have mainly focused on the developments in Georgia. An attempt to decide and joint action by the Permanent Council and the FSC failed, because it did not get the approval of the Russian Federation.

 

The OSCE Secretary General has alerted the PC to the fact that it has become very difficult to find suitable applicants for seconded posts in some missions, in particular in the OSCE Mission in Kosovo.

 

In the two contact groups with the Asian and the Mediterranean Partners, the former Chairman of the PC and now Chairman of the Asian Contact Group, the Spanish ambassador, initiated the cancellation of an informal agreement which had been in place since 2003 about privileged mutual cooperation between the PA and the chairs of the contact groups.

 

 

 

Andreas Nothelle

Ambassador

May 19, 2008