OSCE`s future :: Charter'97 :: News

"What the 55 States of the OSCE need to do is to rediscover a sense of common purpose in addressing issues that are common to them all. I hope that the recommendations contained in this report will help to work towards that end," says OSCE Chair-in-Office, and Slovenian Foreign Minister, Dimitrij Rupel. An all-male `Panel of Eminent Persons` today presented a 32-page report on strengthening the 55-nation security Organization.

The report, entitled `Common Purpose`, comes just ahead of a meeting in Washington of nearly 300 parliamentarians from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (1-5 July). Since enlargement of the European Union in May 2004 to include Central European and Baltic states, as well as Cyprus and Malta, pan-European and regional organizations like the Council of Europe and the OSCE have been forced to consider major rethinks.

Other pressure came came from Russia. The Kremlin earlier this year put pressure on the OSCE by holding up payments to the €168 million budget. The spat with Moscow was less about money but more about the 30-year old OSCE redefining itself as a democratic quality assurance authority. OSCE election monitoring in Georgia and Ukraine, and complaints about rigged Belarus polls, were seen by the Kremlin as allowing pro-Western opposition parties sweep to power following rigged elections. "Russia wants to make a point. It wants less of human rights and human security and more focus on military, economic and environmental issues," Dutch ambassador to the OSCE Daan Everts told the International Herald Tribune.

For Russian Duma deputy Leonid Ivanchenko, the OSCE has engaged in too much finger-pointing only at former Communist countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. "Out of 20 OSCE missions functioning today six operate in the Balkans, five in Central Asia, three in the Caucasus, and six in Eastern Europe," notes Ivanchenko. "There is not a single mission west of Vienna - as if there exist no Northern Ireland, Cyprus, the Basque Country or Corsica with their problems." Too often, Ivanchenko feels, the OSCE fails to criticize abuse of human rights and democratic freedoms in the US or other Western members of the OSCE.

Ivanchenko`s views, together with those of other OSCE parliamentarians, were handed over last Friday in a report on the `Future of the OSCE` by OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President, Florida Congressman Alcee L. Hastings to OSCE chair Dimitrij Rupel. One of the rapporteurs with views diametrically opposed to those of Ivanchenko was Flemish MP Pieter De Crem. "During the last decade of the twentieth century, the Balkans were the OSCE`s main area of operation," states De Crem.

"Now that other institutions – the UN, the EU and NATO – are increasingly involved in reconstruction, state building and security, we feel that the OSCE could increasingly shift its attention and resources towards areas where the OSCE space, the former Soviet Union and the Muslim cultural spheres meet and overlap each other: Central Asia and the Caucasus," continues De Crem, whose report will also be discussed at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Washington.

Like many of the other 300 OSCE parliamentarians, De Crem also wants more democratic accountability from the OSCE chair and secretariat in Vienna. "We not only need the willingness of the executive branch of the OSCE to accept that the PA, like any parliamentary assembly, asks the OSCE-chairmanship and the OSCE-agencies to justify its actions on a number of policy issues, but also to give the PA the appropriate instruments to do so," he notes.

De Crem also wants a debate on whether the name `Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe` is too euro-centric. "Given the Cold War background of the Helsinki initiative and the CSCE’s initial quality of meeting platform for NATO and Warsaw Pact states, and as long as the OSCE’s operational focus was on the Balkans and Southeastern Europe, the emphasis on Europe in the OSCE’s name made sense," he writes.

"Almost one and a half decade after the demise of the Soviet Union, the OSCE groups eight member states that are technically situated in Asia and one key player, the Russian Federation, that is genuinely Eurasian," continues De Crem. "Moreover, the southern ex-Soviet republics border the Middle East and face situations that are increasingly infulenced by developments in the latter region. Therefore, we could consider whether after 30 years, `from Vancouver to Vladivostok` reflects a Atlantic-Eurasian more than a strictly European cooperation."

OSCE parliamentarians` meeting in Washington will be addressed by top officials including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and OSCE Chair-in-Office, Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel. Also on the agenda are issues ranging from anti-semitism, gender equality, election observations, Nagorno-Karabakh, the continued Russian occupation of Abkhazia (Georgia) and Transnistria (Moldova), human trafficking, and democratic rights.