Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Week 6/7, 2017
During the past two weeks there have been meetings by the Permanent Council (PC) and
the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC). A number of committees and other informal
bodies and gatherings have held meetings, including a meeting of the Informal working
group on Legal Personality as well as a Conference on Cyber Security for Critical Infra-
structure.
The PC decided on the date and venue of the 2017 OSCE Asian Conference (Berlin
19/20 June 2017) of the 2017 Annual Security Review Conference (ASRC – 27-29 June
2017 in Vienna). Other points discussed include regular reports and the usual items under
“Current Issues”. In regards to the PA’s committee, two out of three of the PC Committees
Chairs reported on their good cooperation with the PA and announced their appearance
during the PA Winter Meeting. I delivered the usual statement regarding the next week’s
PA meeting, explaining some of the organizational arrangements for this meeting. The
interest in this meeting is high, resulting in a number of information meetings I had with
colleagues.
The situation regarding the extension of the mandate of the field presences in Armenia
and Tajikistan remains unchanged, as does the absence of an approved budget for the
current year 2017. Very soon the extension of the budget for the Special Monitoring Mis-
sion (SMM) to Ukraine needs to be approved, which will further burden the negotiations.
The deadline for nominations of candidates for the posts of Secretary General (SG) and
ODIHR Director expired on Friday. There are five candidates for SG (PA President Emeri-
tus Ilkka Kanerva - Finland -, and Ambassadors Alena Kupchyna - Belarus -, Štefan Füle -
Czech Republic -, Erlan Idrissov - Kazakhstan -, and Thomas Greminger – Switzerland),
and three candidates for ODIHR Director (PA Vice President Kent Härstedt – Sweden -,
Ingibjorg Gisladottir – Iceland -, Goran Svilanović – Serbia). As happened sometimes in
the past, a group of ambassadors will assist the Austrian Chairmanship in the selection
process. There has been no progress on the overdue selection processes for the High
Commissioner on National Minorities and the Representative on Freedom of the Media.
The FSC changed the Date of the Global Exchange of Military Information in 2017 and
approved the Agenda, Timetable and Modalities for the sixth Annual Discussion on the
Implementation of the Code of Conduct on Political-Military Aspects of Security (14 June
2017, Vienna).
I also intensively exchanged ideas regarding PA-UN cooperation with the senior local UN
officer dealing with the OSCE, conducted regular consultations with the Head of the Office
of the OSCE Secretary General, Amb. Bekkers, and met with PA SG Montella.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
February 20, 2017