OSCE, Alm.del - 2012-13 - Bilag 19: Nyhedsbrev fra Ambassadør Andreas Nothelle, uge 7, 2013

Permanent Council Brief Week 7, 2013This week, meetings of the Permanent Council (PC), the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC), ofthe Human Dimension Committee (HDC) and several informal meetings took place. The OSCEInternet 2013 Conference “Shaping policies to advance Media freedom” was attended by fourmembers/alternate members of the OSCE PA as well as by the staff from the Liaison Office.Though largely being a routine PC, during the debate of “Current Issues” the atmosphere was nev-ertheless quite tense. Belarus reacted sharply to allegations of human rights violations in the coun-try, and Azerbaijan issued what it called a “third warning”, asking the OSCE Chairmanship to en-sure that the mission in Baku refrains from what Azerbaijan terms activities that go beyond itsmandate. Azerbaijan underlined that it found assistance by the mission to be very useful, but that itshould not be allowed to act like a human rights monitoring NGO. I briefed the PC about the up-coming Winter Session.The FSC held an interesting debate about the future of conventional arms control. Many – espe-cially Western - delegations had problems accepting the assessment by the Director of the Ger-man “CORE - Institut für Friedensforschung und Sicherheitspolitik” Wolfgang Zellner who said:“The whole European arms control regime has been seriously eroded over the last couple of years.With the original CFE treaty suspended by Russia in 2007, no prospects for the ratification ofACFE, and the consultations ‘at 36’ having failed, the CFE Treaty is definitively dead. The ViennaDocument is functioning, but progress on its modernization and adaptation to changed circum-stances has so far been quite limited. And finally, the functioning of the Open Skies Treaty is im-peded by a dispute between two states on the admission of a third one.” I used the opportunity torefer to the PA’s recommendations concerning Arms Control. The next Security Days, organizedby the OSCE Secretary General in cooperation with Austria on March 4 in Vienna, will also be de-voted to this topic. In addition, there was another meeting of the working group on possible confi-dence building measures in the cyber space.At the first meeting of the ambassadorial working group on the Helsinki +40 Process, many am-bassadors explained their expectations regarding the envisaged three-year process, with one ofthe issues discussed being the role of input by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. The UkrainianChairmanship announced that it would invite representatives of the PA to participate in the meet-ings, and would appreciate written submissions by the OSCE PA on any issues of concern to theAssembly. I referred to the extended mandate of the PA’s Committee on Transparency and Ac-countability and the resolution on Helsinki +40 that had been adopted in Monaco.A visit by US Ambassador Ian Kelly to the office gave us another opportunity to discuss the activi-ties of the PA.

Special Representative