Nyhedsbrev fra Ambassadør Andreas Nothelle, uge 47, 2013

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Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Week 47, 2013
During this week, in addition to the usual meetings of the PC, including a “Reinforced PC” (with
some higher level participants from the capitals, the Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC) and
its subsidiary bodies, as well as the PC Committees and meetings of other informal bodies, there
were a high number of drafting sessions for Ministerial Council declarations and decisions and a
first meeting with the Helsinki+40 Coordinator for issues of Efficiency and Effectiveness of the
OSCE.
The PC took decisions on the agenda for the Twentieth Meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council
(though, as of yet, there is still no consensus on its modalities – one week before the meeting!),
and on the extension of the mandates of the OSCE Centre in Astana, the OSCE Mission to Mol-
dova, the OSCE Centre in Bishkek and the OSCE Project Coordinator in Ukraine. The Reinforced
PC consisted of a series of statements in which participating States expressed their expectations
with regard to the upcoming Kyiv Ministerial Council, without any surprises. At the end of the
week, it became known that the US Secretary of State Kerry has cancelled his participation in the
Ministerial Council.
All in all, discussions, especially at the occasion of the Chairmanship’s Helsinki+40 report, re-
vealed not only the usual East-West divide on a high number of issues in all three dimensions,
but increasingly also a split between Western countries as to whether the OSCE should strictly be
a forum for diplomatic dialogue or if explicit critical statements on Human Dimension issues
should be the main working method. Only one country, Turkey, explicitly called for close coopera-
tion with the Parliamentary Assembly during this debate. Under “Current Issues”, Mongolia spoke
about its first year as a participating State, with extensive references to visits it had received from
PA representatives throughout the year.
The drafting has now gained momentum. However, there is still little likelihood that participating
States will agree on a political declaration. Two points continue to make this impossible because
of fundamental disagreements between the West and some CIS countries: concrete references
to several of the "frozen" conflicts and specific language in the human dimension. In general, (im-
proved) text proposals on the Parliamentary Assembly have been supported by individual delega-
tions. Due to opposition from Russia, Canada and other participating States, however, it is unlike-
ly that references to concrete PA recommendations will be possible, even in the – usually less
controversial – drafts on economic issues. Although several EU member States in the Economic
and Environmental Committee had signaled to be supportive of proposed language, the repre-
sentative of the EU took the same negative stance on PA proposals as Canada had done before.
Three members of Parliament from the OSCE Partner Country Japan visited the office.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
November 25, 2013
OSCEs Parlamentariske Forsamling 2013-14
OSCE Alm.del Bilag 9
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