The Jamestown Foundation
Tuesday, January 18, 2005 — Volume 2, Issue 12

MOSCOW THREATENS, SLOVENIAN CHAIR DITHERS, UKRAINE RALLIES AT OSCE

by Vladimir Socor

Addressing the 2005 inaugural session of the OSCE Permanent Council on
January 13, Russia openly threatened to sink the organization unless it
accepts Russian-prescribed “reforms.” Permanent representative Alexei
Borodavkin declared, “The situation has reached the critical point, and any
further delay in reforming the organization would bring grave political
consequences upon the OSCE . . . This year can either mark a turning point
toward a renewed OSCE, or see it pushed farther toward the periphery of
European politics.” He made clear that Moscow would continue to press its
point by refusing to approve the organization’s 2005 budget.

The Russian address listed “reform” proposals carried over from the
preceding year, but with some shifts of emphasis. Most notable among these
is a demand for the OSCE to pressure Latvia and Estonia into conferring
citizenship unconditionally to Soviet-era arrivals, as well as granting
voting rights in municipal elections to non-citizens, and stopping school
reform. Borodavkin’s speech implied that OSCE inaction on these issues would
add to Russia’s reasons for questioning the organization’s legitimacy: “Why
does the OSCE keep silent about that scandalous situation? It is not
difficult to guess why. Should it continue in this vein, the OSCE could
forfeit its ‘honest broker’ function and, therefore, its political
usefulness.” Such warnings appear designed to spur the OSCE into resuming
its meddling in Estonia and Latvia through the organization’s High
Commissioner on National Minorities after a four-year pause.

That move, currently in preparation, corresponds to Moscow’s notion of
“strengthening the OSCE” as long as it cooperates with Russia. Along the
same lines, Borodavkin’s address insisted, the “OSCE must continue its
efforts toward conflict-resolution in the established formats” — a
reference to Moldova/Transnistria, Georgia/South Ossetia, and the Karabakh
conflict, all formats in which the OSCE underwrites Russia’s dominant role.
The Russian address offered to “strengthen” the OSCE even more by asking it
to become involved in conflict-resolution in Western Europe.

Assailing the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights
(ODIHR) as a “clear example of political hypocrisy” and “an instrument of
manipulation and destabilization,” Borodavkin warned, “We are not going to
put up with this.” He demanded that ODIHR’s standards for monitoring and
evaluating elections be harmonized with Russia’s standards, and that its
field operations add personnel from Russia and CIS countries. For now, ODIHR
remains one of the few OSCE institutions able to operate outside Russian
control.

In his inaugural address as OSCE Chairman-in-Office for 2005, Slovenian
Minister of Foreign Affairs Dimitrij Rupel seemed to aim primarily for the
organization’s survival. Unlike previous chairmen-in-office, Rupel failed to
mention the most egregious human rights and security problems in the OSCE’s
area of responsibility, such as Chechnya, Russian troops in Moldova and
Georgia, de facto border changes by military force, and breaches to the CFE
Treaty of which the OSCE is the custodian. Observing, “It is truly
unfortunate that we do not have an agreement on a budget for the year in
which we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act [and] the
15th anniversary of the Paris Charter for a New Europe,” he omitted the even
more unfortunate fact that the OSCE is unable to uphold those covenants, or
at least for the record to note their ongoing violation on the territories
of several OSCE member countries.

Rupel tried to offer Russia a degree of satisfaction by agreeing — under
apparent duress — to discuss several of Moscow’s reform proposals. Without
alluding to Russia’s responsibility for terminating the OSCE’s Georgia
Border Monitoring Operation (BMO), he expressed regret for its termination
and called for reconsidering the issue in response to Georgia’s expressed
wish. Casting Slovenia in the role of West-East facilitator, he expressed
hope that the example set by the “summit meeting of Presidents Bush and
Putin in 2001 in Slovenia . . . will guide our work this year,” for the
chairmanship and the OSCE generally. Rupel appeared oblivious to that
summit’s notorious connotations in terms of misperception of the Kremlin
leader.

For their part, the Moldovan and Georgian delegations called for withdrawal
of Russian troops from their territories, as well as internationalization of
conflict-settlement negotiations so as to include the United States and the
European Union. Moldova also appealed for international monitoring on the
Transnistria sector of the Moldova-Ukraine border, as well as for
international inspection of Russian and Transnistrian military units and
arms stockpiles. Georgia asked for urgent resumption of the Border
Monitoring Operation on the Chechen, Ingush, and Dagestani sectors of the
Georgia-Russia border from Georgian territory. The U.S. and European Union
statements supported these goals in varying degrees.

Ukraine’s position, reflecting the recent political developments in the
country, changed dramatically by comparison with November 2004. Speaking on
behalf of the GUAM group of countries (Georgia-Ukraine-Azerbaijan-Moldova),
the Ukrainian delegation put the Permanent Council on notice, “The OSCE has
to prove its capability to safeguard the implementation of its own norms and
principles.” GUAM and other countries “strongly believe that the issue of
unresolved conflicts should always be at the forefront of the daily agenda .
. . We call on the OSCE for more active engagement and decisive actions.”

These assertions did not reflect confidence in the OSCE’s capacity to
perform; rather, they seem intended to build the case for transcending the
OSCE so as to broaden the existing formats. The Ukrainian statement
expressed “strong support” for the BMO (enjoining the “OSCE to give due
regard that the extension of BMO is strongly supported by the host country
and the international community”), for the proposed Declaration on Security
and Stability for Moldova, and for international inspection of the military
installations in Transnistria. Russia had thwarted all of these initiatives
toward the end of last year, exposing the organization’s structural
paralysis.

(Documents of the Permanent Council session and Slovenian Chairmanship,
January 13).