Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Week 3-5, 2017
During these weeks, there were several meetings of the Permanent Council (PC) and the
Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC), including two Special PCs, plus meetings of a
number of committees and the first Preparatory Meeting of the Economic and Environ-
mental Forum "Greening the economy and building business partnerships" with the partic-
ipation of the Chair of the PA’s Second Committee, Nilza de Sena (Portugal). Also, the
Chair of the PA’s Ad hoc Committee on Belarus, Vice President Kent Härstedt (Sweden),
chaired an information meeting bringing together OSCE Institutions and International Or-
ganizations dealing with Belarus. The meeting was organized by the Vienna Liaison Office
and sponsored by the Swedish delegation (as will be reported in the News from Copen-
hagen).
A Special PC Meeting on the last day of the reporting period saw Armenia join the con-
sensus on the outstanding extension of several field presences: the missions to the Rus-
sian-Ukrainian border checkpoints and the revision of the 2016 Unified OSCE Budget.
However, there is still no full consensus on the extension of the mandate of the Offices in
Yerevan and Tajikistan, the latter due to a request from the host country to re-negotiate
the mandate – and, of course, the 2017 Unified Budget has not yet been approved. Also,
during one of the PC meetings, there was another sharp controversy between Armenia
and Azerbaijan, as a number of current issues have been raised related to the conflict
dealt with by the Minsk Group, namely incidents regarding two Azerbaijani hostages in
Armenia, the outstanding return of the body of an Azeri serviceman from Armenia, and the
issue around the demining activities of the OSCE Office in Yerevan. Another Special PC
meeting dealt with the escalating violence in Eastern Ukraine.
One FSC meeting saw a special discussion on the future of the OSCE’s core document
on Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBMs), the “Vienna Document”. Calls
mainly by Western countries for an update of the instrument were again met with opposi-
tion from Russia, on the basis that Russia’s calls for an update had remained unheard in
the past when such an update would have been timely; now the general situation in Eu-
rope had closed this window of opportunity, unless there was a change in political posi-
tions of certain participating States. However, contrary to similar recent discussions, the
tone seemed altogether somewhat more conciliatory.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
February 6, 2017