Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Week 4, 2015
The schedule of the first regular working week was impacted by the increased
hostilities and civilian casualties in Ukraine. A Special Permanent Council (PC)
meeting with - via video transmission - Amb. Tagliavini, Special Representative for
Ukraine, and Amb. Apakan, Head of the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine
(SMM) dealt exclusively with the issue. There were also regular meetings of the
PC, the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC), the Security, the Economic and
Environmental and the Preparatory (PrepComm) committees as well as informal
negotiations. Roberto Montella participated in visits of the PA leadership to Geor-
gia and Turkey.
The regular PC devoted its first part to Holocaust Remembrance Day, with a spe-
cial event on this topic taking place during the lunch break. In his statement, the
ambassador of Israel strongly commended OSCE PA President Kanerva’s press
release on the terrorist attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris. The Special PC
approved a declaration on the conflict in Ukraine, as recommended by Ambassa-
dors Apakan and Tagliavini. While, in both meetings, everybody stressed the need
to adhere to the Minsk accords, the reports made it also apparent that the violence
is a result of both sides trying to establish facts concerning the demarcation line
between the parties of the conflict. Apakan and Tagliavini called upon the parties
to refrain from launching attacks from positions near civilian installations or resi-
dential areas because this inevitably leads to civilian casualties. Under several
“Current Issues” items, the controversies regarding the situation in and around
Ukraine again led again to long discussions.
The FSC saw the opening of the Mongolian Chairmanship with the Foreign Minis-
ter of Mongolia, Lundeg Purevsuren. I reiterated the PA’s wish for a continuation of
the good cooperation with the FSC Coordinators on issues like the Code of Con-
duct and parliamentary oversight over the security sector, and thanked Mongolia
for hosting our next Autumn Meeting.
In the Security Committee, the OSCE Coordinator for Transnational Threats
(TNTD) pledged to continue his department’s cooperation with the OSCE PA, in
particular its Special Representative on Terrorism.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
January 19, 2015
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