Nyhedsbrev fra Ambassadør Andreas Nothelle, uge 10, 2014

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Special Representative
To:
PA President
and
PA Secretary General
PC Brief Week 10, 2014
The week was overshadowed by the events in Ukraine. The situation also – partly – impacted on the
tone of the debates, in which some ambassadors did not adhere to the usual diplomatic language. It
should have been the week of the Annual Implementation Assessment Meeting (AIAM – on the im-
plementation of Confidence Building Measures), but this meeting, too, was devoted – in part – to polit-
ical rather than (as in previous years) purely technical issues. Besides that, there were meetings of the
Permanent Council (PC), a joint meeting of both decision-making bodies (Forum for Security Coopera-
tion – FSC – and PC), the Contact Group with the Mediterranean Partners, the Preparatory Commit-
tee, and other committee meetings, among them the Human Dimension Committee which was ad-
dressed by the Chair of the PA’s third committee, Isabel Santos. Two afternoons were devoted to the
hearings of the candidates to succeed Ambassador Lenarcic as Director of the ODIHR. Throughout
the week, Roberto Montella accompanied President Krivokapic; first to Prague and then to Paris.
Both informal and formal meetings revolved around searching for activities that the OSCE could un-
dertake in order to deescalate the tensions in Ukraine. The ultimate goal is to deploy an OSCE moni-
toring mission, but while these negotiations continue, including on a draft decision, the participating
States, the Chairmanship, the Secretariat and the Institutions have taken steps that did not need for-
mal decision-making. The first followed Ukraine’s request for participating States to send military ob-
servers to Ukraine, based on Art. 18 of the Vienna Document, which might have been inspired by the
parallel holding of the AIAM. Such a mission, while based on a document that belongs to the OSCE
acquis, remains a bundling of bilateral actions by participating States and is not – as sometimes
wrongly described – an “OSCE Mission”. Other activities undertaken include the deployment of the
Chairmanship’s Special Representative Tim Guldimann, who visited the Crimea together with the High
Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) Astrid Thors, the Secretariat’s opening of a project on
furthering dialogue within Ukraine to be funded by donations, and the deployment of Human Rights
Monitors by the ODIHR and the HCNM. Ukraine has also requested that the PA contributes to these
efforts, but such a visit did not occur because the Russian interlocutors did not find the PA’s requested
meetings timely.
Despite the ongoing parallel meetings, Isabel Santos’s presentation in the Human Dimension Commit-
tee resonated strongly and was hailed by the Chairman of the pertinent PC committee, Ambassador
Kvile of Norway. In the constituent meeting of the Group of Friends on Mediation, Romania urged the
delegates to include the PA prominently in the efforts.
The hearings of the candidates for Director of the ODIHR did not result in a clear indication of who
might be the front-runner. However, seen from a PA perspective, only Michael Link (Germany), himself
a former PA member, devoted substantial parts of his presentation to ideas about closer cooperation
with the OSCE PA. He and the Icelandic candidate Sigurdsson, another Member of Parliament, also
met with me to discuss our expectations, while the Czech candidate Mareš, a diplomat and lecturer
with some parliamentary experience, expressed regret that he had not found time for such a meeting.
However, both Sigurdsson and Mareš, when mentioning the PA in their presentations, addressed it as
an outside actor similar the Council of Europe or the NGOs. Sigurdsson corrected this in our bilateral
meeting. The Latvian candidate Makarovs did not mention the PA at all in his presentation. Next week,
the Chairmanship will ask participating States for their impressions.
Andreas Nothelle
Ambassador
March 10, 2014
OSCEs Parlamentariske Forsamling 2013-14
OSCE Alm.del Bilag 25
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