OSCE, Alm.del - 2013-14 - Bilag 35: Nyhedsbrev fra Ambassadør Andreas Nothelle, uge 11, 12 og 13, 2014

This week, there were meetings of the Permanent Council (PC), the Forum for Se-curity Cooperation (FSC), the Contact Group with the Mediterranean Partners forCo-operation, the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) and the Advisory Committeefor Management and Finance. Senior Policy Analyst Francesco Pagani participatedin a Training Workshop on the OSCE Code of Conduct in Belgrade.PA Secretary General Oliver, Programme Director Anna Chernova and Communi-cations Director Richard Solash stopped in Vienna on their way to Kyiv to hold in-tensive talks with interlocutors dealing with the crisis in Ukraine and the deploymentof the OSCE’s International Monitoring Mission, including the Chairman of the PC,the ambassador of Ukraine, the Dep. Director of the Conflict Prevention Center(CPC) and the Director of the Office of the Representative of the Freedom of theMedia. They also met with the US ambassador.The PC took no decisions, but held another debate on the situation in Ukraine, un-der “Current Issues”. The atmosphere between Russia and the countries “West ofVienna” is more poisoned than ever, also affecting personal relationships. At thesame time, Armenia made a statement about attacks on ethnic Armenians in Syriaby Al Quaida groups allegedly operating from Turkey, resulting in a sharp contro-versy between the ambassadors of Armenia and Turkey. In the Mediterranean Con-tact Group, another controversy, this time between Turkey and Egypt, resulted fromTurkish criticism of the death penalties against Muslim Brotherhood activists. Duringthe same meeting of the Contact Group, which was primarily devoted to elections inTunisia, I made a statement about the PA’s election observation in Tunisia twoyears ago.There is still no consensus on the budget. There are rumors that a compromise mayhave been found with Russia, but the position of Azerbaijan remains unclear. Also,after the first round of consultations regarding the successor for director of theODIHR, which resulted in an overwhelming support for the German candidate, theSwiss Chairmanship will now focus its consultations on building consensus aroundthis candidate.

Special Representative