OSCE, Alm.del - 2013-14 - Bilag 21: Nyhedsbrev fra Ambassadør Andreas Nothelle, uge 06, 2014

This week, there were meetings of the Permanent Council (PC), the Forum for Security Cooperation(FSC), committees and an event called “Hour with the Secretary General”. I also had a number ofbilateral meetings, in particular with the OSCE Secretary General, the Helsinki+40 Coordinator forreform issues (the Irish Ambassador), and with the OSCE Gender Advisor. Marc Carillet, the PA’sGender Focal Point, spent two days in Warsaw at a workshop on Women’s Political Participation.The PC heard presentations by the Chairman of the PC’s First Committee and the Head of the Mis-sion in Kosovo, followed by routine debates. Under “Current Issues”, the PC debated the situationalong the cease-fire lines between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the situation in Ukraine, includingoffers by the OSCE to assist with the peaceful resolutions of both cases. The ambassador of Moldo-va spoke about the situation in his country. I made a statement about the upcoming Winter Meeting.The most interesting meeting this week was the “Hour with the Secretary General”. In this meeting,Amb. Zannier informed the delegations about the exchange of letters he had with me on the statusof the OSCE PA as an OSCE institution and the way in which it is listed on the OSCE homepage.He voiced support for my argumentation, which was based on the practice established in the firstdecade of the OSCE and on a number of key OSCE documents, particularly the Declaration of theIstanbul Summit, which listed the PA first among – what the Heads of States and Governmentscalled – “our institutions”. Another issue discussed in the meeting was the continued failure of thePermanent Council to adopt the 2014 OSCE budget.The deadline for applications for the post of Director of ODIHR (successor to Amb. Lenarcic) expiredon Thursday at lunchtime. Despite my request for information from the Chair, I have no officialknowledge about the candidates. Informally, however, the list is as follows: Michael Link (Germany),Viktor Makarov (Latvia), Petr Mareš (Czech Republik), Arni Sigurðsson (Iceland). All four of themhave had parliamentary experience.Ambassador Beham, the OSCE Gender Advisor, discussed with me different ideas about how toadequately organize this year’s tenth anniversary of the Gender Action Plan. Finally, the SwissChairman of the PC praised the OSCE PA for the systematic and comprehensive manner in which ithas organized its process of developing a contribution to the Helsinki+40 Process.

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