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CIAO DATE: 08/06
International Affairs:
A Russian Journal
OSCE at the Crossroads
A. Azimov*
The year 2005 abounds in anniversaries connected with the OSCE and its development stages: the Helsinki Final Act was signed 30 years ago; the Charter of Paris for a New Europe appeared 15 years; 10 years ago the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was transformed into an Organization; the Dayton Peace Accords will be 10 years old this year, while World War II ended 60 years ago.
These dates should not be limited to celebrations alone - they should invite us all to ponder on the past, to look at the present and its problems and to think about the prospects of creating a single European space without new dividing lines and of the role the OSCE (now living through far from simple times) can play in this process.
Time has come to ask: Does the OSCE meet the real interests of all its member-states? Is it still coping with its initial role of a forum designed for an equal dialogue and collective decision-making on the entire set of problems related to the developing European security architecture? Do the Organization, its agenda and instruments still correspond to its initially high standards? The OSCE was set up, first and foremost, to unite all European nations for the sake of cooperation on the basis of uniform democratic principles and values. It was not intended to serve an instrument of democratization of sorts to be used to organize the "European periphery."
The meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers that took place in Sophia on 6-7 December 2004 to crown, according to the tradition, the year's political results confirmed that the organization was being torn apart by different, and often, contradictory trends. On the one hand, the meeting confirmed that the organization had preserved some of its old potential that allowed it to reach agreement on several issues: the meeting adopted several documents initiated by the CIS members - the Declaration on the 60th Anniversary of the End of World War II and Statement on Preventing and Combating Terrorism. The meeting also agreed on several purely practical decisions on enhancing container security; combating the use of the Internet for terrorist purposes; reporting lost/stolen passports to ASF-STD; tighter control of brokering in small arms and light weapons; export control of man-portable air defense systems.
The preparatory period and the meeting itself confirmed once more that the OSCE continues accumulating all sorts of negative features and biases. It did not pass a decision on an overripe issue of formulating objective criteria of assessing election processes. The meeting refused to approve the timely initiatives of holding a seminar on military doctrines and an energy conference. It was for the second year running that the Council of Foreign Ministers failed to agree on a political declaration.
One of the saddest impressions of the discussions behind the wings was that the meeting lacked a teamwork spirit to address all common tasks in a constructive way and to reach a reasonable compromise. Some of the delegates, however, spared no effort to draw their OSCE partners into purely political haggling and to tie together issues that belonged to different spheres. This shows that the OSCE is rapidly loosing its shared "philosophy" and the idea of its predestination.
Some of the OSCE members, Russia among them, look at it as a common child and a structure that belongs to a large group of states (today there are 55 of them) in Europe, Euro-Atlantic region, and Eurasia. For them the OSCE is a valuable mechanism to be used collectively to address common important problems and produce balanced decisions. There is another approach that looks at the OSCE in a purely utilitarian way as a unilateral mechanism of those who want to cut the vast and varied OSCE expanse according to their political patterns. Hence the desire to arm de facto the OSCE with intrusive functions and the mechanisms of interference into the states' (not all states, though) sovereign rights. The OSCE is slowly but surely developing into an amorphous structure, a kind of an auxiliary mechanism used to fulfill political orders and carry out decisions passed by other well-known Euro-Atlantic institutes. We all know that certain states regard the OSCE as a "drive belt" for their political interests and an instrument of supervision of the post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav expanses.
Is it surprising, therefore, that the OSCE suffers of destructive trends? Here I have in mind the functional and geographic disbalances and the urge to push forward "human dimension," to concentrate beyond measure on the territories "to the east of Vienna," and the gradual slide toward mere declarations and petty subjects. No wonder, for over five years now the Organization has been unable to offer a meaningful agenda for another summit.
It is steadily losing its initial advantages: at first its three "baskets" were regarded as equally important and equally valuable. Today, two of them - the military-political and economic - are being devalued on the sly. Any careful observer can confirm that in the last several years the OSCE scored no victories in these fields. Indeed, the organization that came into being in a divided world to function through consensus and mutually acceptable approaches to cooperation in the three spheres today, in an absence of blocs, has split into two and artificially divided its members into the Euro-Atlanticists and others. The group interests of certain states and their positions in the bloc lie within a definite field; they are aimed at political monitoring of democratic processes and human rights issues mainly in the post-Soviet expanse. It seems that they are guided by the following logic: it is for the EU to supervise economy in Europe, while NATO is responsible for military affairs. It has fallen to the OSCE's lot to supervise how their values are perceived in the countries left outside the EU and NATO.
This can hardly be accepted. We have not yet managed (because of purely artificial reasons) to put into operation the Agreement (signed in 1999 at the OSCE summit) on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, the cornerstone of the European security system. The OSCE allocates the meager 3 percent of its budget to the economic and ecological issues and 1.5 percent, to counterterrorist measures.
At the same time, the Organization is extremely active in the humanitarian sphere, a very important one. Indeed, there are many urgent issues in this sphere: the uncivilized treatment of ethnic minorities in Latvia and Estonia and the newly erected visa barriers that interfere with the Europeans' freedom of movement. The OSCE shows some concern in the former and absolutely ignores the latter. Here is a paradoxical situation: if the democratic principles are shared by all OSCE members then can we accept the situation in which those who have been living in the Baltic states for decades are denied citizenship, are deprived of the right to vote in local elections, while their right to be educated in the native tongues is infringed upon?
Which issues rivet the OSCE's attention? The OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) concentrates on election monitoring. This is useful yet the absolute majority in ODIHR election observation missions belongs to representatives of a certain group of countries whose verdicts are obviously based on dual standards. In some cases violations of the OSCE's election principles are described as negligent; in others, similar violations are taken for a total absence of democracy. In some cases, ODIHR representatives may approve of the election process and leave the country even before the votes are counted; they may compile their report while remaining in the country's capital or they may bring thousands of observers to scrutinize all and every polling station.
In some countries they may raise hue and cry about the "administrative reserve," in others it remained unnoticed; the observers may even favorably comment on the pressure by politically biased and well-organized crowds that interferes with the functioning of state offices. They may go as far as saying that in a month the country acquired a cardinally new and much better election system and election practice. In other countries, representatives may turn a blind eye to obviously positive changes in election practices. They guide themselves by the "white-and-black" picture borrowed from other times and offer their support or put pressure accordingly.
OSCE observers are obviously biased in their assessments: rather than being guided by democratic concerns they demonstrate narrow-mindedness and one-sided approach. In this sense the OSCE is trying to turn its no longer useful mechanism into the "drive belt" of political influence. Today, the question of using the OSCE election observation missions outside the OSCE member-states is being raised with increasing insistence even though this obviously contradicts the organization's mandate and common sense. There is no object for such observation since the countries outside the OSCE have never associated themselves with its election standards. "Political expediency" is the only reason.
These maneuvers have become possible because of the OSCE's institutional looseness and the gaps and gray zones in its procedures; they make it possible to feign that there are no rules at all. All conclusions about the election procedures and their correspondence to the principles agreed upon with the OSCE are judged by eye. More likely than not the verdicts are based on unverified information and random impressions that require no proof and entail no responsibility.
One may ask why the election observers mainly represent one group of states; the reply supplied by the OSCE does not hold water: because there are no adequately qualified specialists in other countries.
The same is true of certain thematic reports supplied by the OSCE institutions. Sometimes they are based on information received from one of many randomly chosen NGOs; the OSCE stamps the report and it is accepted as official. Alternative information is ignored, different opinions are avoided; the OSCE collective structures do not discuss or analyze such reports.
The OSCE allocates over 74 percent of its budget for its field presences; 17 missions are operating in the CIS countries and the Balkans where they concentrate on political monitoring. This means that there is an a priori conviction that this region should be reformed and that other OSCE member-states have no problems. In actual fact, the picture is not that simple.
The system of OSCE funding that took place chaotically in the past is another issue. The sizes of annual payments of member-states to the OSCE budget cannot be explained.
There is another specific feature: many of the projects realized under the OSCE aegis receive off-budget funding. Some countries pay more to the off-budget rather than to budget funds. Obviously, those who pay call the tune.
Money affects the composition of the field presences and groups of election monitoring: the majority of those who came with such missions and as so-called short-term observers are paid by the countries that send them, therefore participation in election monitoring depends on funding. Sometimes, no secret is made of the fact that the total number of representatives of any country in the OSCE Secretariat, institutes and missions depends on the amount of money it pays to the organization. None of the OSCE documents contain this provision therefore the members are left to act as they see it fit and according to their funds. Meanwhile, this is not a joint stock company.
All this is accompanied by deliberations that the OSCE is luckily a very flexible structure and can act promptly, without prolonged deliberations, delays and agreements obviously, in its own interests.
The far from normal situation forced the leaders of nine countries to make a Statement by CIS Member-Countries on the State of Affairs in the OSCE of 3 July 2004. It contains an unpleasant yet unbiased truth about the OSCE that having failed to adjust itself to the realities of the changing world proved unable to ensure efficient functioning in the sphere of security and cooperation in the Euro-Atlantic expanse. Later, on 15 September 2004 foreign ministers of eight CIS countries adopted an Appeal to the OSCE that contained several constructive and concrete suggestions on how the situation could be remedied; the document said that the Organization should return to its original conception of balanced and equal cooperation on each of the three "baskets."
This is not a new or radical initiative: in September 2003 Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, and Russia offered a detailed document on how to restructure the OSCE's field activities.
In 2005, the OSCE and its Chairman-in-Office, while working in all priority directions including its counterterrorist efforts, should concern itself with a comprehensive reform of the OSCE designed to adapt its agenda and mechanisms to the new political realities and challenges. Our program of such reforms includes the following:
Restoration of the disrupted balance between the three security dimensions - military-political, economic, and humanitarian. We are convinced that it is precisely the comprehensive approach to security based on the equal value of the three "baskets" that is one of the Organization's specific features and its advantage. This means that the role of the military-political and economic elements should be enhanced.
We are convinced that the adapted CFE should be promptly enacted; there is no reason to tie this issue with the bilateral political agreements of 1999 between Russia and Georgia and Russia and Moldavia that contained no obligations related to the third countries. Russia has fulfilled all CFE-related obligations and, together with Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, the most important of them - ratification of the Adaptation Agreement - formulated by the 1999 Istanbul OSCE summit. We call on other parties to do the same: this would demonstrate that they are willing to preserve the Organization's unique military-political potential.
We think that the work on adaptation of the Vienna CSBMs Document 1999 should be continued through seminars of the highest level on the military doctrines and a new security measure in the form of bringing down the notification and observation military thresholds. The Forum for Security Cooperation acting independently under the OSCE aegis should receive a more important role to play.
It is equally necessary to increase the OSCE's contribution to international counterterrorist efforts and to strengthen this sector with better funding and staff through re-channeling the OSCE's funds.
We are convinced that the OSCE's expert opinion about settlements of regional conflicts should strengthen (rather than devalue or undermine) the existing negotiation formats and mechanisms so as to help the sides reach agreements. We should find the ways of using the OSCE peacekeeping and conflict-settlement instruments across its entire space not just "to the east of Vienna."
The economic dimension, too, should receive a new content: I have in mind equal conditions of trade and economic cooperation in the interests of all sides involved; the organization should address the most urgent problems related to the freedom of trade and better business contacts and possibilities; cooperation in industry, energy and transport, investments, exchanges in the sphere of science and technology; environmental protection, and realization of socially important projects. Our suggestion that a Conference on Energy Security in the OSCE Region should take place in 2005 matches the above.
The Organization's main systemic faults are better seen in the humanitarian dimension. They have already invited criticism of many of the member-states: dual standards; politically biased assessments and approaches to certain countries and regions, and the use of human rights issues as instruments of political pressure.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the methods and methodologies the ODIHR uses for election monitoring are far from perfect. In recent years the results of such efforts have been causing a dangerous trend: conclusions are no longer regarded as mere technical recommendations - they have developed into an instrument of political pressure and a destabilizing factor.
It seems that time has come to produce unified criteria of unbiased election assessments to be applied across the OSCE expanse. Comparative analysis of the election laws and practices of all OSCE member-states could serve a stage on the way toward the final aim. Opposition of some of our OSCE partners to our draft decisions on this issue cannot but cause alarm. The subject has become an urgent one: the OSCE monitoring of the U.S. presidential elections (for some reason the very fact caused heated debates in the U.S. political establishment) revealed that fact that in some of the states the election laws prohibit the presence of observers at the polling stations. (The same can be said about the UK.)
Nobody doubts the democratic nature of the election process in these countries yet one may ask: How should we treat the obligation to invite foreign election observers assumed by the OSCE member-states? This calls for a detailed exchange of information and opinions. It is in place here to remind that conclusions of the CIS election observers in a country differ, sometimes to a great extent, from the verdicts passed by the OSCE election monitors. In fact as distinct from the OSCE rather vague election rules and regulations the CIS is guiding itself with a detailed Convention on the Standards of Democratic Elections in the CIS Member-States. We should probably try to organize cooperation between these structures in the election sphere. This cooperation might begin with a joint seminar.
The OSCE can improve its effectiveness by concentrating the efforts of its field missions on their mandates' main clauses connected with helping the host governments realize concrete projects within the entire range of the Organization's tasks. All projects realized by the field presences should be at least agreed with the authorities of host countries; as a rule they should be started according to their demands. All other scenarios are fraught with violations of the following fundamental OSCE principles: non-interference in the domestic affairs of states and respect for their sovereignty. All types of activities outside the mission's mandate can be carried out only on condition of corresponding preliminary corrections of the mandate by a decision of the OSCE Permanent Council. Off-budget funding should be limited for the officially approved projects.
Field missions acting under official mandates should improve their accounting; they should also guide themselves by Art 41 of the Charter for European Security adopted by the OSCE Istanbul summit in 1999 that says: "The host country of an OSCE field operation should, when appropriate, be assisted in building its own capacity and expertise within the area of responsibility. This would facilitate an efficient transfer of the tasks of the operation to the country, and consequently the closure of the field operation." The procedure of appointment of heads of field presences should be improved: today it is the prerogative of the acting Chairman-in-Office. These appointments should be agreed upon with the authorities of the host countries and the Permanent Council as a collective structure. A new instrument of field activities in the form of thematic missions would be useful. They could employ themselves with specific issues within the OSCE's competence and travel to all member-countries irrespective of whether or not field presences operate there.
The scale of fees should be revised. We suggest that a single scale based on objective criteria - real paying capacity according to the tested U.N. methodology should be adopted. Since the issue remained unregulated the OSCE has not yet acquired a budget for 2005; today it is guiding itself by the so-called mechanism of temporal funding (this brings to mind a similar situation of January-April 2002).
Time has come to put into practice the principle of just geographic distribution of posts in the OSCE Secretariat, its institutions, field activities, and election monitoring missions. The organization needs a clear relevant decision.
The already existing Rules of Procedure of the OSCE should be sorted out and new rules should be added with an aim of systematizing and improving the decision-making procedure so as to ensure primacy of the collective intergovernmental structures' prerogatives across the entire range of the OSCE's activities.
The Organization should strengthen its authority by cutting short the practice of disseminating, in its name, conclusions and assessments not agreed upon by the collective intergovernmental bodies and not produced by consensus of all the member-states.
In fact, many of the current problems are caused by the far from complete process that transformed the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe into an Organization. The name was changed by a decision of the Budapest Summit of December 1994 and came into force on 1 January 1995. The process, however, has not been brought to its logical conclusion. Time has come to make the OSCE an international personality. As distinct from the EU, which is an integration alliance, the OSCE does not need a constitution yet it does need a single and clearly formulated charter.
In fact, the decision of the Sofia Summit to set up a "Group of Sages" to draft suggestions on enhancing the Organization's efficiency creates what can be called a good format in principle. It also encourages the Work Group for the Reform of the OSCE and the Group of Friends of the Chairman-in-Office for the further improvement of the field missions' performance to invigorate their efforts. The specific decisions that we may expect from these structures in 2005 will be discussed by the Permanent Council. This will allow us to remedy the current disbalances in the OSCE's activities and strengthen its competence. A genuine reform should be rescued from the threat to be drowned in useless discussions. It is the OSCE's future that is at stake. We expect that abstract deliberations that lead the discussion astray will be replaced with concrete and highly specific recommendations able to help us address the signally important task of qualitative improvement of the Organization's performance at all levels.
We can achieve this when and if all member-states feel at home in the OSCE, when they start regarding themselves equal masters and partners rather than pupils in a school where certain countries have been a priori appointed tutors. This is a show that nobody can appreciate.
The highly varied OSCE composition suggests that its objective variety should be cared for. It is in place here to remind that different models of the universal democratic principles are being realized across the world and within the OSCE in particular. All attempts at adjusting them all to one "technological" pattern against the background of the somewhat half-hearted attitude to the efforts of removing the dividing lines in other directions are a priori destructive and can discredit the idea itself.
Decision-making by consensus should be recognized as the best possible mechanism of combining the members' national interests, a manifestation of their equality and of the Organization's democratic nature. It should be strengthened, not destroyed. It should acquire a universal nature: nobody should assume the right to adopt decisions related to the interests of states without their participation and agreement.
We should think about the OSCE's place and role in the emerging architecture of European security and cooperation. The elements of duplication that are becoming more and more obvious mean that several multisided forums are competing among themselves and that the rather limited resources are being squandered. What can the OSCE add to what other multisided forums of Greater Europe, Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian regions are doing? Obviously, it can help the states of this rather wide zone address their common problems that cannot be dealt with within the much narrower formats of the EU, CIS and NATO. Such problems are numerous. If, however, we shall treat the OSCE as a place where the sub-regional alliances can simply present their concerted positions to one another the OSCE will never develop into an organization on its own right. It will develop into an informal club with no role for efficient Chairmanship or field missions. This format will be used sporadically since the sub-regional organizations find it easier to deal directly with one another. We should clearly recognize this and act accordingly.
The fact that the OSCE and the Council of Europe are working within the same field urged their leading structures to pass a decision on setting a coordination group to improve their cooperation. Indeed, their mutual desire to avoid duplication might force them to delineate their roles in much clearer terms; there is an opinion that the two structures might merge in some hypothetical future.
Today, the OSCE looks strange and even paradoxical. Set up during the Cold War years to unite its members it is beginning to disunite them. It has stuck at an intermediate stage of its institutional and procedural development that saps its efficiency. This should be ended. Today, the expert community and even the public have stopped treating as "heretical" the questions of whether the Organization has outlived its time and whether it having fulfilled its mission that belonged to a definite historical period came close to the border behind which there is no place for it.
Disappointed and concerned we still believe that there is hope. We are resolved to continue working with our partners to enrich the OSCE's agenda and to adapt its mechanism so as to help it reveal its unique potential of addressing urgent issues outside the blocs.
The OSCE has reached a crossroads that leads either to its continued functioning or to its death. Its ability to adopt in 2005 specific decisions designed to promote the set of measures related to its reform will determine its future. Nobody openly objects to the reform yet there is a risk that it will be buried under a heap of words or will be reduced to "painting the facade." The consequences will be serious: we have reached the moment of truth. We can no longer accept the current alarming situation in the Organization, with the functional and geographical disbalances and the contradictory ideas about the priorities of this still respected structure.
The OSCE's institutional reforms should become the key direction in its functioning; its results will affect our assessment of the Slovenian Chairmanship and our political line within the Organization. This is a fundamental issue and the basic criterion according to which Russia will judge not only the OSCE's ability to reform itself and adjust to the new conditions but also the degree to which our partners are prepared to take into consideration the justified collective concerns of the CIS countries. The OSCE will continue loosing its significance if we fail while acting together to reverse the dangerous trend of its degeneration from the mechanism of an equal dialogue and consensus into an instrument of political manipulation, destabilization, and confrontation.
Russia does not need a crisis; it is prepared to continue looking for such priorities of constructive cooperation with its partners that will tap its vast resources in the interests of all member-states and to build up the OSCE's still inadequate potential, its usefulness and profile. Its future depends on the extent to which all member-states prove to be equal to the far from simple tasks that confront us all today.
Endnotes
Note *: Anvar Azimov, Deputy Director, Department of European Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation; Candidate of Sciences (History). Back