Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Week 45, 2015
This week there were meetings of the Permanent Council (PC), the Forum for Security Co-operation, a Special
Event with the Contact Group with the Asian Partners for Co-operation, the Preparatory Committee (Prep-
Comm), the Advisory Committee on Management and Finance (ACMF), the Economic and Environmental
Committee and the Human Dimension Committee Meeting, as well as a full-day ambassadorial retreat in prepa-
ration for the upcoming Ministerial Council in Belgrade, which was reinforced by senior diplomats from the capi-
tals. Francesco Pagani participated in the PA’s election observation in Turkey and in the ODIHR Needs As-
sessment Mission in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
The Permanent Council, in a Special Meeting, heard reports from the Head of the Special Monitoring Mission to
Ukraine (SMM), Amb. Apakan, and the Special Envoy of the Chairmanship in Ukraine, Amb. Sajdik, and debat-
ed them. Amb. Apakan reported about 576 monitors in Donbass presenting a 25 percent monitor increase over-
all in Ukraine, with a 60 percent increase in Donbass, underlining that the expansion would continue up to 1000
observers, and pointing to the importance of utilizing the latest technological advancements such as Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). In looking ahead, he highlighted the need to increase cooperation with the UN and the
Ukrainian government, and the importance of removing the mines which claimed many casualties. The regular
PC heard the reports of the three Special Representatives on Tolerance Issues. Because of the Special PC,
Current Issues only debated the issue of Ukrainian citizens imprisoned In Russia as part of the Ukrainian agen-
da. During the debate about the reports by the Special Representatives on Tolerance, it became clear once
more that there is almost no coordination between them, and that reporting is a problem. Some participating
States had to react to reports that they had not seen before. There was another short discussion about the elec-
tions in Azerbaijan. Russia stated that ODIHR and the OSCE PA had refused to observe under a politicized
pretext. I replied referring to my previous PC statements, the restrictions imposed on the observation by the
ODIHR, which had led to the PA’s decision etc. I also said that the importance of applying the appropriate
methodology is demonstrated by the omission of essential parts of elections in the PACE statement.
The FSC approved the dates and venue of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Implementation Assessment Meeting next
year.
While some drafting of Ministerial Council Documents has started (at this late point), there is still much uncer-
tainty about a possible outcome of the Ministerial Council in Belgrade. The Chairmanship will follow the example
of the Swiss and sort out what they will take along to Belgrade at some later stage, probably a week before the
MC. Despite the intention of the Chairmanship to find out more about the positions of delegations, no explicit red
lines were mentioned during the retreat, since in the light of the little knowledge delegations have about draft,
most considered this to be “premature”. There are drafts or ideas for more than 20 texts, several of which will
have little chance of finding a consensus. Delegations will also enter into another drafting exercise on declara-
tions of general political nature, which are not supposed to be aiming at “the least common denominator and
clearly speak out on the violation of OSCE commitments that have led to the current major security crisis”. He
likelihood of achieving a consensus on this is of course very low. Some mentioned the danger that urgent busi-
ness – like achieving full and unimpeded access by the SMM to all parts of the Ukrainian territory, observing the
whole of the Russian-Ukrainian border, or looking into the situation of minorities in occupied Crimea – might get
lost in this drafting exercise.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
November 9, 2015