BRATISLAVA, January 4, (WEBNOVINY) — The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) urgently needs to set new tasks for itself, thinks Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic. In an interview for SITA news agency, he said that there is a number of challenges including international terrorism, displays of aggressive nationalism and intolerance, illegal migration, distribution of narcotics, and impacts of financial, economic and energy crises, which all crucially concern all OSCE member countries.
In early December, Gasparovic attended the OSCE summit in Kazakhstan. “The OSCE needs to be equipped with tools and a mandate for more flexible prevention of conflicts and more effective participation in their solution including those in Nagorno-Karabakh or Georgia. It seems, said the president, that progress will be achieved only after a slight change of the wider geopolitical superpower context.
The OSCE summit in Kazakhstan was to define new tasks of the organization as OSCE was not always successful in preventing armed conflicts in Europe. Though the summit has adopted a final political declaration, participants failed to agree on another document, an action plan, mainly owing to different perception of approach to some regional conflicts, said the president. Gasparovic however does not think that the summit ended with a fiasco. Top representatives of 55 member countries from 79 delegations including observer states came together after eleven years of stagnation in OSCE activities and declared the will to seek ways to revive its activities.
Crucial for the organization, according to the Slovak president, is to achieve a framework agreement on modernization of the regime of arms control and disarmament. He underscored that a new regime of control might again function as the basic pillar of our security system. Gasparovic underscored that intensive talks were held on this topic in Astana and they will continue even after the summit. According to Gasparovic, also this is the result of Slovakia’s presidency over the consulting group of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. That in itself means important progress, thinks the head of state.
SITA
