III OSCE
| Author | Arie Bloed |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934410502300308 |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Part B: Human Rights News |
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III OSCE
ARIE BLOED
1. PANEL OF EMINENT PERSONS PRESENT THEIR REPORT
At the end of June 2005, the Panel of Eminent Persons (PEP) presented their report
with recommendations to the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna. The Panel had
been established by the last Ministerial Council meeting in Sofia, where the
disagreements about the future role of the OSCE (again) could not be resolved. So,
the establishment of the group of wise men constituted in a sense an emergency
measure to ‘park away’ the problem (cynical view), although some others would
consider it a major step forward to delegate the highly sensitive reform debate to a
group of officially ‘private persons’. The basic mandate of the group was to develop
bold, but realistic ideas about how the organisation could solve the major problems
which divide, in particular, Russia and some other CIS countries from the rest of the
55 participating States.
The Panel consisted of ‘wise old men’ (women were not included in the group)
with long-standing experience in or with OSCE, headed by the former Norwegian
Foreign Minister Knut Vollebaek. Further it consisted of high-level (former)
diplomats from the USA, Russia, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Kazakhstan, Germany
and Croatia.
The fact that the PEP was able to produce a consensus document may be
welcomed and is an achievement in itself. Event though all members officially acted
as ‘private citizens’, it is obvious that several of them were under clear instructions
from their government. That explains probably why the PEP report is definitely not
a ‘bold’ document with revolutionary ideas for the future of the OSCE. Rather it
contains a considerable number of carefully worded recommendations on smaller
and bigger issues, facing the organisation in the light of the debate about its future,
triggered by the Russian authorities already in 2000. The Russian Government and
some of its CIS allies clearly consider the OSCE as an ‘unbalanced’ organisation in
terms of activities (too much human rights and election monitoring and too little
attention for political and security affairs as well as economic issues) and in terms of
geography (too much attention only for the region ‘east of Vienna’). The recent
‘colour’ revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan have only worsened the
situation and Moscow obviously considers the OSCE election monitoring reports as
one of the major triggers of these events which resulted in a considerable loss of
political influence in strategically important regions.
The PEP report will be the basis for high-level consultations in September,
although it is quite doubtful whether these consultations will bring positive results in
just one month. The aim is to have formal ‘reform’ decisions taken at the next
Ministerial in Ljubljana in December this year, but it remains to be seen whether the
political will exists to come to real solutions for the main issues which divide the
parties.
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