Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Weeks 41/42, 2016
During these two weeks, there were a regular meeting of the Permanent Council (PC), a joint
PC/FSC (Forum for Security Cooperation)-Meeting and another FSC meeting. There were
also meetings of the Contact Group with Asian Partners, the Advisory Committee on Man-
agement and Finance (ACMF), the three topical committees, the Informal Working Group on
Migration, and a high number of other meetings, including first informal meetings on draft text
proposals for the December meeting of the Ministerial Council (MC) in Hamburg. Marc Caril-
let spent two days with Vice President Härstedt in Stockholm and Brussels (on Belarus), and
Francesco Pagani spent seven days on the Election Observation Mission to Montenegro.
Also, PA Secretary General Montella visited Vienna together with the PA’s new Financial
Officer, and participated in a meeting with visiting staff from the US Helsinki Commission. In
addition, I hosted a working lunch for six newly arrived ambassadors from Austria, Belgium,
Canada, Egypt, Greece, and Norway.
The PC meeting was mainly on the reports by Director Link on the recent Human Dimension
Implementation Meeting and by CPC (=Conflict Prevention Center) Director Pesko on the
work of this body of the OSCE Secretariat. The joint PC-FSC meeting focused on the topic of
the 1996 OSCE Framework for Arms Control and possible further developments in this area.
The outlook is not promising, partly because Russia made very strong remarks about ‘oppor-
tunities missed in the past and which will not come back so soon’.
Other than that, there are the discussions of the different parts of the proposed draft OSCE
budget for 2017. Marc Carillet spoke in favour of ODIHR’s request for additional funds for
election observation. The current OSCE staff statistics are attached to this report. Also, first
discussions on possible texts for the Ministerial Council were held, some of which include
language on the OSCE PA. Of particular interest for the PA is an important acknowledge-
ment of the work of the PA in the field of addressing the conflict cycle and mediation. The
draft also contains an encouragement to make more use of the PA. However, in an unusual
move, the Russian delegation stated that the draft could not even serve as a basis for dis-
cussions, for reasons that are not related to the part on the PA.
Another eternal topic that delegations addressed once again was related to the efforts to give
the OSCE the long overdue legal personality – with no sign of any progress.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
October 24, 2016