Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Week 37, 2015
This week there were meetings of the Permanent Council (PC), Forum for Security Co-
operation (FSC), the Contact Group with Asian Partners for Co-operation, the Preparatory
Committee (PrepComm) and the Economic and Environmental Committee, as well as an
OSCE-Wide Drug Conference "Enhancement of Mechanism to Cope with Increasing Spread
of Illicit Drugs Amongst Young People", the Regional Meeting of Heads of Field Operations
in the South Caucasus and a number of informal meetings. I hosted several meetings with
newly arrived ambassadors, the most recent newcomers being from France, Germany, Rus-
sia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland and the United King-
dom. I also had consultations with the ambassadors of the USA and Ukraine.
The PC did not take any decisions. It debated the reports by the Project Coordinator in
Ukraine and the new CPC Director Marcel Pesko, a former Permanent Representative of
Slovakia who before headed the office of the OSCE Secretary General. The debates under
Current Issues dealt with the same items as in previous meetings, but in a clearly less po-
lemical manner. This is largely owed to the present status of the cease-fire in Eastern
Ukraine. Apparently, this was the first day without any reported incident since the begin-
ning of the hostilities. I briefly referred to the upcoming OSCE PA Autumn Session in Mon-
golia, and so did Francesco Pagani in the Contact Group with the Asian Partners.
The FSC Meeting was the first under the new Norwegian Chairmanship. It was addressed
by the Secretary of State of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, Bård Glad Pedersen.
In the drugs conference, a general consensus was found on the need to take a broader ap-
proach by engaging civil society, bolstering early preventive measures, and improving ad-
diction recovery (while remaining vigilant against organized crime/drug trafficking). There
is a vastly divergent view between a legal/regulatory vs. prohibitionist approach to drug
policy. Overall, the OSCE was mentioned as a key international organization to coordinate
regional efforts in fighting drug abuse. However, there was a lack of concrete proposals on
OSCE engagement, besides the continuation of organizing this conference on an annual
basis.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
September 11, 2015