Among the challenges needing the OSCE’s attention are the so-called “frozen conflicts” in Georgia, Moldova and Nagorno-Karabakh, the new OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, said while addressing the organization’s Permanent Council in Vienna on January 11.
“In each of these disputes, walls have been built up, dividing peoples, and these walls must be torn down. To achieve a sustainable solution, we must intervene now to provide a solid basis for progress,” he said.
In his speech Miguel Angel Moratinos outlined the fight against terrorism, protecting the environment, encouraging participation in pluralistic societies and strengthening the OSCE’s role as top priorities of the organization for 2007.
The Spanish Foreign Minister holds the rotating OSCE chairmanship for 2007, following in the footsteps of Belgium Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht in 2006. The latter put solving frozen conflicts in former Soviet states and tackling organized crime as the OSCE’s top priorities for 2006.
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