Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Week 26 and 27, 2014
During these two weeks, the OSCE PA held its Annual Session in Baku, leading to the ab-
sence of most of the permanent PA Liaison Office staff from Vienna. The office nevertheless
covered meetings of the Permanent Council (PC), the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC),
their subsidiary bodies and a number of other informal meetings. In addition, there was the
three-day Annual Security Review Conference (ASRC), a Supplementary Human Dimension
Meeting (SDHM) on Freedom of Expression and the launching of the Group of Friends for Se-
curity Sector Reform (SSR).
Delegations made several references to the PA’s Annual Session during various agenda items
of the PC. Marc Carillet made a brief statement about its outcome, highlighting the election of
the former Chairman-in-Office and Finnish Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva, a personality well
known to the diplomats, as the new PA President. The resolution on Russia’s interference in
Ukraine drew a lot of comments. I will provide a more expansive summary of the Annual Ses-
sion to delegations in two weeks’ time. The PC also heard the reports from the auditors and
the Audit Committee in the context of the Financial Report and the Financial Statements for
the year ended 31 December 2013, and approved the decision on the Financial Report and
the Financial Statements.
The ASRC was more interesting than in years past due to its strong focus on the crisis in and
around Ukraine. There were substantial discussions around the OSCE’s potential to address
the crisis and serve in a mediation capacity. Although not explicitly mentioned on the agenda,
participating States discussed the need to resolve the protracted conflicts in quite some detail.
Intensive debates between the delegations of Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as Moldova and
the Russian Federation testified to the continued relevance of these protracted conflicts.
References to the PA’s actual and possible further contributions were limited to its Ukraine
Election Observation Mission, so I was compelled to give a more detailed insight into the PA’s
activities and the instruments it offers to participating States. In Session IV of the ASRC, Ms.
Shukria Barakzai, Member of the National Assembly of Afghanistan, described the aspirations
of Afghanistan, emphasizing the importance of Afghan ownership of the transition process and
discussing the persisting challenges in the security sector.
The SHDM served as yet another battleground for the Ukrainian and Russian delegations;
they accused each other of limiting democratic space and, in particular, the activity of journal-
ists. Partly due to this sparring, the outcome of the – most of the time badly attended - meeting
was limited to general statements of support for protecting the freedom of expression. The
workshop on the Helsinki +40 parliamentary network, by contrast, produced some interesting
ideas with the aim of making the field presences more effective and efficient.
Slovakia chaired the first meeting of the Group of Friends for SSR. A joint UN-OSCE confer-
ence on the subject will be held in Vienna on 7 July.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
July 7, 2014
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