OSCE.org
June 22 2005

Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE)

OSCE Parliamentarians meet in Washington to debate international
security and human rights topics

/noticias.info/ COPENHAGEN, 22 June 2005 – Nearly 300
parliamentarians from the 55 OSCE participating States will meet in
Washington, DC, from July 1-5, to debate issues affecting the OSCE
area, including gender equality, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia
(Georgia), trafficking in human beings, and respect for human rights.

The 14th Annual Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe will be
addressed by senior officials including the US Secretary of State,
Condoleezza Rice, and the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Slovenian Foreign
Minister Dimitrij Rupel. The current President of the Assembly is US
Congressman Alcee L. Hastings of Florida.

Coming from all parts of the OSCE, parliamentarians from North
America, Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia will meet to debate
current issues. In addition to the resolutions prepared by the
Assembly’s Rapporteurs on political, economic, environmental and
human rights issues related to the Session’s theme ’30 Years since
Helsinki: Challenges Ahead’, supplementary resolutions on specific
issues have been prepared.

Consideration will be given to topics such as piracy, trafficking in
human beings, standards of conduct by international humanitarian
workers, combating terrorism, trafficking in small arms, the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, gender equality, co-operation with
Mediterranean states, Abkhazia (Georgia), money laundering and
corruption, Moldova, anti-Semitism, election observation activities
and OSCE reform. The Final Document, to be adopted on the last day of
the meeting, will include recommendations on these and other issues.

Meeting for the first time in the United States, this will also be
the first opportunity for the OSCE parliamentarians to meet and hear
an address by the newly appointed Secretary General of the OSCE,
Ambassador Marc Perrin de Brichambaut. The Assembly will also honour
Ukraine Television Channel Five with the tenth OSCE Prize for
Journalism and Democracy, to be awarded on the first day of the
Session.

The meetings of the Assembly will take place in the premises of the
JW Marriott Hotel in Washington, DC. All documents and forms for the
Session, including press applications, resolutions and other general
information, can be found on the Assembly’s website:

The Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, created by the CSCE Summit in
Paris in 1990, is the parliamentary dimension of the 55-nation
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The primary
task of the 317 member Assembly is to facilitate inter-parliamentary
dialogue, an important aspect of the overall effort to meet the
challenges of democracy throughout the OSCE area.