Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Week 50, 2014
During this week there were meetings of the Permanent Council (PC), the Forum for Security
Cooperation (FSC), the Advisory Committee on Management and Finance (ACMF) as well as
their subsidiary bodies and informal gatherings. I also attended a conference in the Austrian Na-
tionalrat (Parliament) entitled “Parliamentary Actions for a nuclear-weapon-free world event”,
which was chaired by PA Vice President Muttonen, a side event during a two-day conference on
the same topic.
The Permanent Council heard the reports by Personal Representatives of the OSCE Chairper-
son-in-Office on Combating Anti-Semitism, on Combating Intolerance and Discrimination against
Muslims, and on Combating Racism, Xenophobia and Discrimination, also Focusing on Intoler-
ance and Discrimination against Christians and Members of Other Religions. Under Current Is-
sues, the PC had the usual exchange on the situation in Ukraine, with all sides calling for a swift
implementation of the Minsk agreements. It was announced that the strength of the Special Moni-
toring Mission (SMM) has reached 320 monitors and is expected to attain its full agreed upon
strength of 500 monitors by mid-February 2015. Discussions about financial issues and the next
three-month extension of the border monitoring mission are still ongoing.
US Ambassador Baer raised the issue of the US Senate report on CIA torture. Except for Azer-
baijan, which used the opportunity to elaborate on the US human rights record, delegations are
apparently planning to come back to the issue at a later stage. Under “Any Other Business”, I
spoke about the annoying fact that the OSCE Magazine (“Security Community”), in its article
about the OSCE activities in Ukraine in its latest issue, depicted the recent election observation
mission in Ukraine led by PA Vice President Härstedt as a purely ODIHR exercise, not even men-
tioning the PA, the cooperation we had, or the role of the Special Representative. In his reply,
Secretary General Zannier agreed that this was unacceptable, at the same time claiming that the
journalists writing the articles in the magazine enjoy editorial freedom. However, it is the respon-
sibility of the Secretary General to have a corrective mechanism in place when a publication pub-
lished by the OSCE Secretariat, written by OSCE staff, using the OSCE logo and paid by the
OSCE participating States spreads information about the work of the OSCE that is factually
wrong.
The deadline for the budget expires on December 20, 2014. There is still no consensus on the
budget. The latest compromise proposal provides for an increase of a total of 142.5 million Euros,
which is 200.000 Euros above the 2014 Approved Budget, so this year’s budget is getting close
to zero nominal growth again. The reduction is mainly caused by a reduction of the increase re-
quested by the ODIHR (9.9 percent) to 3.3 percent (including one million Euros less for elec-
tions). Discussions about the status of the field presence in Kazakhstan are equally ongoing.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
December 12, 2014
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