OSCE’S CHAIRMANSHIP YIELDING TO RUSSIA ON ISTANBUL COMMITMENTS
Eurasia Daily Monitor
Monday, November 27, 2006 — Volume 3, Issue 218
OSCE’S CHAIR YIELDING TO RUSSIA ON ISTANBUL COMMITMENTS
by Vladimir Socor
With barely ten days remaining until the OSCE’s year-end conference in
Brussels, the draft ministerial declaration (centerpiece of the conference
documents) would weaken the West’s hand and strengthen Moscow’s on the most
salient hard-security issue in Europe: Russia’s 1999 commitments to
withdraw its forces from Georgia and Moldova. Moscow has repeatedly tried to
decouple this issue from the 1999-adapted Treaty on Conventional Forces in
Europe (CFE), so as to bring this treaty into force on the territories of
the three Baltic states and to place the Baltic states under treaty
limitations.
Those commitments, as well as that treaty, were approved as a package
at the OSCE’s Istanbul summit in 1999. Consequently, the NATO and European
Union member countries have taken the position all along that the
Russia-desired ratification of the adapted CFE treaty is `linked with’ (that
is, conditional on) Russia’s complete fulfillment of its Istanbul
Commitments. In 2005-2006 Russia made significant progress toward
withdrawing its forces from the Batumi and Akhalkalaki bases in Georgia on a
timetable running until 2008 — a fact welcomed in the 2006 draft
ministerial declaration. Apart from that promising step, however, Moscow has
continued to breach its 1999 Commitments and CFE treaty principles on
multiple counts during 2006.
The relevant text in the OSCE’s 2006 year-end draft declaration
would — if adopted — loosen the linkage policy, relegate major elements in
Russia’s Istanbul Commitments to oblivion, and bring the adapted CFE treaty’
s ratification much closer. The treaty’s entry into force would in turn
trigger a procedure to extend its applicability to the three Baltic states’
territories and negotiate with Russia about setting limits to any possible
allied deployments there.
Drafted largely by this year’s Belgian chairmanship and reflecting
some of Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel de Gucht’s publicly stated
views, the OSCE declaration’s relevant text reads:
`We urge State Parties to the CFE Treaty to fulfill the outstanding
commitments undertaken at the 1999 Istanbul Summit. We welcome the
[Russia-Georgia] agreements that have led to substantial progress on the
ground. We call for completion of this process. As regards Moldova, no
progress could be registered in 2006. We call on the Russian Federation and
parties concerned to allow the process of withdrawal of ammunition and
related military personnel to resume expeditiously. We reaffirm our shared
determination to promote the entry into force of the Adapted CFE Treaty’
(OSCE Ministerial Council, Belgian Chairmanship, MC.DD/2306, November 23).
The paragraph on Moldova is phrased in a way that could all but
liquidate the remaining Istanbul Commitments there. It only mentions
withdrawal of ammunition, omitting the troops, although the Istanbul
Commitments require the complete withdrawal of Russian forces, a term that
focuses on the troops. From 2002 to date, the United States and European
allies as well as Moldova have consistently focused on the Russian troops
when calling for fulfillment of Russia’s Istanbul Commitments. Earlier this
year, however, De Gucht repeatedly called for withdrawal of Russian
ammunition only, omitting the troops. And earlier this month, Belgium’s
ambassador to the OSCE in Vienna, Bertrand de Combrugghe, heading a
fact-finding delegation to Chisinau and Tiraspol, similarly declared in both
places that the OSCE sought the withdrawal of ammunition, failing to mention
the troops (Basapress, Infotag, Regnum, November 12-14).
The draft’s reference to `ammunition-related personnel’ is an
innovation to allow Russia’s troops to stay. In the course of that visit to
Transnistria, the OSCE group was told by the Russian command that only about
100 Russian `personnel’ (sotrudniki), not army troops but a `militarized
protection service" (voyennizirovanaya okhrana), are guarding the massive
Russian ammunition stockpile there (Regnum, Infotag, November 13). Thus, it
appears that the ministerial declaration’s drafters would be content to see
just those 100 Russian personnel withdraw along with the ammunition. While
de Combrugghe did mention in Tiraspol the known fact that `one of the sides’
(Chisinau) does not accept the Russian `peacekeeping’ operation, that point
remains academic if the OSCE releases Russia from the Istanbul Commitments
on troop withdrawal.
The document calls on Russia "and parties concerned to allow’
ammunition withdrawal to proceed, the other "parties" being Tiraspol. This
is a further innovation to provide excuses for Moscow. Responsibility for
the unlawful stationing of Russian forces in Moldova has all along been
Russia’s liability and no one else’s. The Istanbul Commitments also hold
Russia alone liable for the unconditional withdrawal of its forces. However,
Moscow has attempted to offload those responsibilities onto other `parties,’
thereby dividing its own political liability and setting third-party
preconditions to fulfilling what are Moscow’s unconditional obligations. In
the last few years, Moscow has falsely claimed that Tiraspol’s authorities
`do not allow’ Moscow to withdraw the ammunition, let alone the troops.
Occasionally, Moscow has also alleged difficulties with Moldovan railroads
and rolling stock or Ukrainian safety concerns about the transport of old
and dangerous ammunition. However, the Tiraspol authorities (its appointees)
provide Moscow with the main alibi for blocking the troop withdrawal. The
OSCE’s draft declaration plays along with Moscow’s tactics by asking unnamed
other parties to unblock Russia’s withdrawal.
In its finely nuanced, trademark OSCE phrasing, the document calls for
the ammunition withdrawal merely to `resume," as an open-ended `process,’
rather than asking for it to be completed within a certain timeline. With
Russia having breached several actual deadlines in succession, the OSCE at
its year-end 2003 Maastricht conference gave up setting any deadlines or
timelines, realizing that Russia’s persistent noncompliance was exposing the
organization’s ineffectiveness.
The document’s pledge to promote the adapted CFE treaty’s ratification
is not accompanied by a conditional clause that would have referenced a
linkage with Russia’s Istanbul Commitments. Nor is any reference made to
Moscow’s breaches of both the original 1990 and the 1999-adapted treaties.
The unfulfilled commitments and ongoing treaty breaches include: Russia’s
retention of the Gudauta base in Georgia, which was due for closure in 2001;
deployment of treaty-banned combat hardware with secessionist forces in
Abkhazia, Karabakh, and Transnistria; and stationing of `peacekeeping’ and
other Russian troops in conflict areas without host-country-consent,
although such consent is a central principle of both the existing and the
unratified CFE treaties.
Adopting this section of the OSCE’s ministerial declaration for 2006
in this form could at one stroke erase most of Russia’s outstanding Istanbul
Commitments by the custodial organization itself. Such a development, should
it come to pass, would mark a high point of Russian clout within the OSCE.
–Vladimir Socor