OSCE, Alm.del - 2012-13 - Bilag 31: Nyhedsbrev fra Ambassadør Andreas Nothelle, uge 19-20, 2013

PC Brief Week 19/20, 2013During these weeks, there were meetings of the PC, the FSC, the ACMF, the committees and othersubsidiary bodies, as well as a “Roundtable Meeting on Inter-religious Dialogue in Promoting Free-dom of Religion or Belief”. Roberto Montella, Christian Pauzenberger and I spent a large part ofthese two weeks on the election observation in Bulgaria; I also participated in the Regional Heads ofMissions Meeting in South East Europe in Skopje.Secretary General Zannier presented the Programme Outline (PO) of the 2014 OSCE UnifiedBudget to the PC. This PO is meant to give political guidance to the fund managers before they startdrafting the budget. It proposes increases in the budgets of the Vienna based Secretariat and theODIHR in Warsaw by 3% and 12% respectively. The EU, while opposing an overall increase of theOSCE budget in the current economic context, would consider positively diverting resources fromthe field operations in the Balkans to both institutions. The USA supports additional resources for theODIHR, particularly for election monitoring, but is opposed to an increase of resources allocated toVienna. The Russian Federation is opposed to any increase in the ODIHR budget.In a special meeting, the PC was addressed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan. Hecomplained that the OSCE’s peacekeeping mandate is not substantively addressed, and that therewas an absence of political will to look into the problems of internally displaced persons. Accordingto the minister, problems impeding progress in protracted conflict resolution formats are kept apartfrom OSCE conflict cycle related discussions and documents and attempts to reinforce the princi-ples of transparency, state, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and host-nation consent in negotiationson modernizing arms control regimes and CSBMs yield no results. Most delegations underlined theimportance of finding a solution for the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict, but did not go into the details ofthe minister’s complaints. Instead, they raised issues regarding the human rights situation in thecountry and the requested downgrade of the mission. Switzerland regretted that Azerbaijan's oppo-sition on some PC decisions is delaying the OSCE's work and preventing consensus in the decision-making process.The PC finally took an organizational decision on the Human Dimension Seminar “Media FreedomLegal Framework” to be held on 13-15 May. The adoption of the agenda only four days before theevent actually took place was heavily criticized by Western states for the burden it put on the organ-izers. I reported about OSCE-PA Cooperation during the EOM in Bulgaria, which was characterizedby a return to the practices that had led to the Bureau’s Dublin Decision. The Chairmanship an-nounced that it would pass this on to the ODIHR and ask ODIHR to also report on its experience.The FSC took a decision on the agenda, timetable and modalities for the second Annual Discussionon the Implementation of the Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security. For the firsttime in months, we were invited back to attend the Secretary General’s coordination meeting.

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