OSCE Chairman: Conflict Resolution Re-energized

The OSCE is re-energizing its work on conflict resolution and crisis management, Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, told the UN Security Council on September 26.

“Recent events highlight the fragility of the rules-based international order that the UN, with the support of the OSCE, strives to build,” he said. “The crisis in Georgia has underlined the critical importance of co-operation between the two organizations.”

Stubb said that the OSCE had swiftly decided to send an additional 20 military monitoring officers to Georgia and he hoped a deal on deploying a further 80 could still be reached. The additional OSCE monitors, however, will not be deployed inside South Ossetia.

The OSCE Chairman-in-Office also said that a new platform involving the UN, the OSCE and the EU, and other stakeholders, should be used for a comprehensive approach to security and stability in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

International talks are expected to be launched on October 15 in Geneva, as envisaged by the September 8 agreement between the Russian and French presidents.

The talks will be held on the expert level, following an EU failure to secure Russian agreement to hold them on a foreign ministerial level.

"We have agreed for now on the fact that it will not be at the ministerial level at the beginning but at the expert level," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told AFP after EU and Russian foreign ministers met on September 23.
 
The meeting is still scheduled for Oct. 15th, though it might be moved by a day or two, he added.

"It was necessary that it not degenerate into a confrontational and pointless meeting," Kouchner said.

"I think we’re looking at an expert level so we’re not starting with a big bang or a ministerial meeting," Finnish Foreign Minister Stubb said after the meeting. "And I think this was pretty much also what the EU suggested, what the OSCE suggests and also what (Russian FM Sergei) Lavrov thought was a good idea.”

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