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STATEMENT
by H.E. Mr. Sergei Martynov, Minister of Foreign Affairs
of the Republic of Belarus at the OSCE Ministerial Council
Meeting
(Sofia, 6 December 2004)
Mr. President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The OSCE was established nearly 30 years ago as a forum for
an equitable political dialogue and cooperation for security. On the eve of
the forthcoming Organization’s anniversary it is especially appropriate to
ask ourselves how much the today’s OSCE meets the real needs of all its
Member States and in what direction it should be developing.
The OSCE’s contribution to the formation of the system for
comprehensive security in Europe is immense, obvious and unarguable. It is,
though, equally obvious and unarguable that the Organization has been in an
ever growing deep structural and conceptual crisis.
Exacerbation of political situation in Kosovo early this year
was one of the many examples of our Organization's repeated failure to
neither predict the escalation of violence nor play even a minor role in the
prevention and relief of tension.
There is an impression that the OSCE is unable and does not
care to get rid of its image of a dependent subject of international
politics that has been strongly associated with the Organization over the
recent times. Essentially, the OSCE has been turned into a meek, amorphous
structure whose role has been reduced to “taking care” of political
decisions already made by other institutes. And this has nothing to do with
the so-called "flexibility" of the OSCE.
What happened to the OSCE's once leading role in preventive
diplomacy in the region? Peacekeeping and prevention are being taken over by
other organizations and structures. Similarly, the OSCE mechanisms set up
for crisis settlement, unblocking of “frozen conflicts” and post-conflict
rehabilitation do not work.
Rectifying geographic misbalances in the OSCE’s activities
still remains a pressing problem.
This year, decades after the establishment of our
Organization, we for the first time had tentative signs of dialogue in the
Permanent Council on the situation with electoral processes in the so-called
“mature democracies”. Even this limited discussion was sufficient enough to
discover numerous failures in the electoral systems of those countries. The
electoral campaigns that took place this year in many OSCE Member States
confirmed that no country is immune from criticism. By the way, who and
where happened to divide OSCE Member States into the so-called "mature" and,
analogizing, what might have been implied, "adolescent" democracies? To the
best of my knowledge, that division was not made in our Organization. It
became clear that the OSCE ODIHR’s methodology in the area of election
observation was not prefect, and that there was lack of transparency in the
ODIHR’s work.
In our opinion, the outcome of the ODIHR’s recent elections
observation in a number of countries has revealed a rather risky trend. That
was that ODIHR’s findings were no longer just technical recommendations to
improve electoral processes. They had been made instruments for political
pressure, resorted to on the basis of obvious double standards. Some
countries began to use ODIHR reports as justification for all sorts of
sanctions once the outcome of elections happens to be not what they
expected. What kind of cooperation can one possibly talk about here?
Consequently, the ODIHR is being transformed from the institution for
assistance in democratization into a destabilizing factor for societies. It
appeared that the development of unified and objective criteria to assess
democratic nature of elections and improve the ODIHR’s methods of work would
have changed the present situation. And we proposed a draft decision to that
end. Much to our surprise, it was rejected by the same countries that take
so much pleasure in teaching others on how to run elections.
Instead, we keep being engaged in endless rhetoric on the
"exceptional value of field presences and missions as unique OSCE
instruments"
We cannot possibly avoid the question as to under what
conditions our Organization should normally decide on the opening of field
presences. It is also imperative for us to think over the missions’ cost to
the OSCE, as well as their efficiency against the resources spent on them.
Is it worthwhile, for example, to spend a million EURO on a mission to
ultimately realize projects amounting to some tens of thousand EUROs? Yet,
the missions take up nearly 80 % of the total OSCE budget.
It is really high time to have a full-fledged “inventory” of
the missions, a special meeting that would review the aspects of the OSCE
field activities in their entirety and decide on where continuation of an
OSCE presence is really a necessity, or whether it should be abandoned for
some other form of cooperation. The package of proposals on reforming field
missions that we presented last year is still on the table.
All that is a convincing proof that the instruments at the
OSCE’s disposal, as established in the Organization's basic documents, have
not just gone seriously blunt. They are simply not up to the today’s
challenges. The OSCE continues to remain in a deep systemic, functional and,
if you like, ideological crisis. It has so far failed to adapt itself to the
realities of the modern world.
This is exactly why Belarus considers the OSCE reform as the
major issue on the OSCE agenda and that of our today’s meeting. This was the
very rationale behind our acceding to the joint statements on the necessity
of the OSCE comprehensive reform adopted this year by the CIS Member States
in Moscow and Astana.
We do not believe that an invitation to a straightforward
dialogue on the OSCE working methods can possibly lead to its dissolution.
On the contrary, reluctance to acknowledge the existing problems, abstention
from seeking response to real challenges to our common security is far more
detrimental to our Organization.
In this regard, we see as extremely dangerous the attempts to
produce an illusion of reform, formulate some “alternative agenda, a new
niche of its own” for the OSCE through adoption of essentially partitive
decisions. Besides, such decisions often duplicate functions of other
international structures and do nothing but "disperse" the Organization's
material, human and financial resources.
We are convinced that the OSCE has no need to look for any
"niche" whatsoever. The Organization already has its unique identity and
role. This role should only be redefined, adapting the OSCE to the present
international realities, namely through adoption of clear Rules of Procedure
of the OSCE, transformation of its standing political organs into truly
efficient instruments for preparation and making decisions on genuinely
pressing problems of ensuring our common security, fixing the activities of
field missions, restructuring of the Secretariat.
So far the far-fetched search for the so-called "new niche"
for the OSCE has only resulted in the Organization's continuing overlooking
of fundamental processes defining "the face", level of security across the
area stretching from Vancouver to Vladivostok. Meanwhile, the misbalance
between the three OSCE dimensions is only getting worse, accompanied by
useless declarations of their equal value.
There has been no serious progress in the implementation of
the strategies adopted at the Ministerial Council in Maastricht, namely the
one to combat challenges and threats, as well as in the area of economic and
environmental dimension.
The Republic of Belarus has made its own contribution to
increased effectiveness of the OSCE Economic Forum by initiating a
Ministerial Council draft decision to assist coming into force and
implementation of the UN Convention against Corruption.
Belarus strongly supports the adoption of the Declaration on
the 60th Anniversary of the End of WWII. We believe that this joint
declaration must become our Organization's adequate response to the rather
alarming and short-sighted statements by individual politicians in some OSCE
Member States.
It is really high time to pay a truly serious attention to
the OSCE politico-military dimension, including in terms of strengthening of
the FSC role.
The CFE Treaty crisis is obvious. Belarus sees no objective
reasons for other countries to delay ratifying the Agreement on the
Adaptation of the CFE Treaty. The adapted CFE Treaty is too much important,
critically important for it to be used as a bargain counter in the
geopolitical battle across the NIS area. Continuing refusal to ratify the
adapted CFE Treaty under vain pretexts threatens to break-up the balanced
system of European security.
Likewise, the 1999 Vienna Document does not, in our opinion,
live up to the today's realities. It is critical to set to removing these
flaws.
It is also suggested that we start working to review
effectiveness in the implementation of other OSCE politico-military
documents. This is primarily about the OSCE Document on Small Arms and Light
Weapons and guiding Principles in the area of non-proliferation.
The measure of our success in addressing the challenges
confronting us today will very much influence the essence of the question
that we shall ask ourselves on the Helsinki’s 30th Anniversary: “What kind
of OSCE do we need?” or “Do we need OSCE?”
In conclusion, allow me to address the expressions of
appreciation to Bulgaria for its contribution to the OSCE’s work and
preparation of our today’s meeting. I would like to particularly praise
Solomon Passy whose professional and personal merits were an important
component in the overall success of the Bulgarian Chairmanship. We would
also like to wish Slovenia a successful work as the OSCE Chairman-in-Office
in 2005.
Thank you for your attention. |
