OSCE, Alm.del - 2012-13 - Bilag 33: Nyhedsbrev fra Ambassadør Andreas Nothelle, uge 24, 2013

PC Brief Week 24, 2013This week was another routine PC week with meetings of the Permanent Council(PC), the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC), the Contact Group with the AsianPartners for Cooperation, the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom), the SecurityCommittee, the Economy and Environment Committee, and other subsidiary bod-ies, as well as an informal Helsinki+40 Working Group meeting (“Developing strate-gic approach to the OSCE economic and environmental dimension: the way for-ward”).The PC debated three periodic reports (OSCE Representative on Freedom of theMedia, OSCE Centre in Astana, OSCE Project Co-ordinator Uzbekistan) and ap-proved – one week before the event! - the Decision on the agenda on organizationalmodalities of the 2013 Annual Security Review Conference PC.DD/7/13. The com-promise was – once more – to refrain from agreeing on a detailed agenda.Under “Current Issues”, the delegations debated, among other items, the situationin Turkey and legislation in the Russian Federation on “Propaganda non-traditionalsexual relations among minors”. Both items revealed once more the deep dividethat exists in the perception of value-related developments in the OSCE area, andalso in the way in which such issues are addressed. Increasingly, countries “East ofVienna” resort to similar attacks on their “partners” on the other side. This time, they(Belarus and Russia) raised the issue of the “Violation of the right to privacy by theUSA” - the PRISM affaire. The EU and its membership remained silent on the issue.The entire week, the staff of the Liaison Office and I were also analyzing the currentsituation of the elections in Albania – the seventh election that we are observing inthe country -, in cooperation with colleagues in Copenhagen. A briefing book hasbeen prepared and circulated, and evolving issues are closely monitored as a fol-low-up to our recent pre-assessment visit. Half of the office will move to Tirana to-morrow.

Special Representative