OREANDA-NEWS. November 30, 2010. A summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will open in Astana on December 1.

It will bring together in the capital of Kazakhstan, chairman of the OSCE, the leaders of 56 member countries, as well as guests – representatives of the 12 OSCE Partners for Co-operation and several dozen other international organizations. President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev was the first to support the initiative of President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev to convene an OSCE summit.

The very fact of the convocation of this meeting is already a major achievement and an indubitable success for Kazakhstan's chairmanship of the OSCE. I will stress that this is the first summit to be held outside of Europe geographically, thus symbolizing the inextricable link between Asian and European members of the OSCE. Eleven long years have passed since the previous summit.

Of course, this pause is not accidental and suggests that the OSCE was experiencing difficult times, a sort of “identity crisis.”

As I see it, in conditions of an increasingly wide awareness of the need to establish in the Euro-Atlantic area and Eurasia, a security system common to all the states situated here the OSCE may find a new relevance.

Indeed, the origins and history of the OSCE are intrinsically connected with the idea of a pan-European security system. It is also clear that it is President Medvedev’s proposal to conclude a European Security Treaty that has begun to get the OSCE out of hibernation and stimulated the launch, including at its venue, of a broad discussion on the issue of having the European architecture meet the demands of the times and the realities of the post-Cold War world. Input by the OSCE in this case would be decisive, if only because of its broad-based line-up and the non-bloc character of its work as agreed upon back at its founding.

The Final Recommendations of the Helsinki Consultations on the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, from which grew the OSCE), Helsinki, 1973, specifically stated: “All States participating in the Conference shall do so as sovereign and independent States and in conditions of full equality. The Conference shall take place outside military alliances.”

It is pertinent to recall that the largest applied achievements of the OSCE were associated with the breakthrough agreements in the military-political sphere – the base for international security and mutual confidence-building measures. On the sidelines of the CSCE/OSCE summits (Paris, 1990, Istanbul, 1999), participating States adopted the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and the Agreement on Its Adaptation, which, unfortunately, has not come into force because of the NATO countries’ refusal to ratify it.

A few days before the summit in Paris, the Vienna Document on Confidence- and Security-Building Measures in Europe was adopted and its updated versions were approved before the summits in Helsinki (1992), Budapest (1994) and Istanbul (1999).

It is gratifying that in our days the preparation for the OSCE summit in Astana has been marked by a common desire to agree on a new update of the Vienna Document and on ways to overcome the impasse on the issue of conventional arms control in Europe.

The proposal submitted by Russia to the OSCE to adopt a Program for further action in the field of arms control and confidence- and security-building measures has met with positive response.

From the new agenda it would be useful to build up the OSCE’s input to international efforts to combat terrorism, drug and human trafficking and other types of transfrontier organized crime. Russia and the US have launched at the OSCE an initiative to ensure the security of the tourism industry from terrorist threats, and – conjointly with Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, USA, Tajikistan and Turkey – a draft OSCE concept for combating the illicit trade in drugs and precursor chemicals.

Of course, there is too little time left to achieve coherence across all the relevant accords. Therefore an impetus given by the leaders at the Astana forum to continue this work, an assignment to bring it to a positive result would be of great importance.

In the OSCE’s field of vision is, quite naturally, the problem of the settlement of regional conflicts within its space.

OSCE-led mediation efforts of no small importance are underway in this area. That is an exacting and delicate job. Capitals are pondering how best to organize it. Russia has submitted proposals on developing uniform principles for resolving the conflicts, which, of course, would be applied in practice taking into account the specifics of each of them. This would help avoid double standards in this highly sensitive area. We actively participate in concrete negotiating formats, aiming to help the parties in conflict bring their positions closer, enhance mutual trust and arrive at a peaceful political settlement.

There is simply no other reasonable way to do it, and any attempts to somehow speed up the process from the outside, to impose something, to tackle problems at the expense of one of the conflicting parties and to ignore the realities are counterproductive, and sometimes would just exacerbate the situation.

One ought not to keep stepping on rakes and getting hit in the face. We, unfortunately, have witnessed more than once how a seemingly reached compromise as a result of incautious movements for the sake of political expediency literally crumbled before our eyes and the settlement process rolled back.

In addition, with respect to various conflict situations in the OSCE a strange craving for a selective approach can be observed – focusing on some of them and maintaining a complete silence on others. I do not think it is justified.

The work of the OSCE in this area also knew overt failures that require careful analysis and learning the lessons. In August 2008, the OSCE observers in the area of the then Georgian-South Ossetian conflict reported on the imminent Georgian attack and its beginning, but their reports for some reason never got to the OSCE Permanent Council. Perhaps it is because of this that the Permanent Council was unable to give a proper assessment of what happened.

Russia then proposed that an internal investigation be carried out to identify problems with the circulation of information within the apparatus of the OSCE. Dealing with the problems of the lack of transparency and clear rules in this area would offer a serious reserve for more effective anti-crisis efforts of the OSCE. Against this background we have great doubts about the proposals to give the OSCE toolbox “greater flexibility” and for “accelerated action” to resolve conflicts through the introduction in the OSCE of non-consensual mechanisms. The realization of these scenarios would lead to the destruction of the OSCE and then also to a weakening of the responsibility of states themselves for the preservation of peace and security.

Besides, the actions of the Kazakhstan chairmanship during the tragic events in Kyrgyzstan have shown that with the good will of its members, the OSCE is quite able to arrive at consensus solutions, conducive to calming the situation and transferring it into the path of searching for political and legal decisions.

Moscow sees the key to solving the issue of enhancing the effectiveness of the OSCE in further decisive steps to turn it into a full-fledged intergovernmental organization.

To this end it is necessary to establish a clear regulatory framework for its entire work. Three years ago, together with a group of like-minded people, we circulated in the OSCE a draft Charter of the OSCE, and proposals on streamlining the various areas of its activities on a mutually acceptable basis. Without such a legal strengthening, the OSCE is at risk of losing its position among the other international organizations operating in the Euro-Atlantic area.

Of paramount importance for the whole OSCE area are commitments in the field of human rights and the strengthening of democracy. There should always be a trusting dialogue, an exchange of “best practices” rather than mentoring.

Nobody in this world is perfect, and we encounter problems with human rights throughout the OSCE space every day. This must be taken fully into account in the work of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), which is still far from ideal.

There are even no rules agreed by OSCE participating states for its activities. In collaboration with several partners, Russia has proposed to eliminate this gap, but there has been considerable resistance to this initiative with reference to the “autonomy” of ODIHR. I think that this “game without rules” does not become either the OSCE or those of its members who aspire to the role of trendsetters for “democratic fashion.”

Reluctance to confirm the intergovernmental OSCE framework only exacerbates the distortions and imbalances in its activities, and at precisely the moment when the OSCE faces the problem of defining its own optimal “niche” in the new division of labor among the multilateral organizations.

Thus it is necessary to do so that the search for a “place under the sun” does not lead to duplication in areas where the successful efforts are undertaken in other formats. Russia supports a pragmatic approach to the saturation of the political agenda of the OSCE with new themes. In each particular case, it is necessary to see together what real “added value” the involvement of the OSCE can bring to member states.

For example, the question remains open about the relationship of the work of the OSCE and the Council of Europe, considering that the latter elaborates international law standards, and legally binding norms for dealing with problems relevant to all of our societies in the most diverse areas of “soft security,” including human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The OSCE, on the other hand, elaborates political commitments, with some of them having become sort of forgotten. An illustrative example is the liberalization of visa regimes proclaimed in many decisions of the CSCE/OSCE, up to and including their complete abolition. I think it would be appropriate not only to recall this in the outcome documents of the summit of the OSCE, but also to take steps to translate this commitment into practice. After all, freedom of movement is a subject of direct interest to every person.

In connection with the upcoming summit of the OSCE a good window of opportunity is opening up for all its member states. The aim is to restore a culture of political dialogue in the OSCE at the highest level, and to identify ways to build in the OSCE space a common and indivisible security community and switch to a new quality of cooperation in responding to the common challenges for all of us. Russia is disposed to engage in productive work. The main thing is to be based on the fundamental principles enshrined in the founding documents of the Organization and to seek mutually acceptable ways to implement them in practice.