A Cold War-style dispute between Russia and the United States dominated the annual ministerial council meeting of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which this year was held in Madrid.
At the ministerial council, held on November 29 and 30, controversies over the future of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, and on the future of the organisation’s election monitoring body, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), remained unresolved. More than 40 foreign ministers and lower-level representatives from the 56 OSCE countries gathered in the Spanish capital.
In spite of a unanimous call from the West, including all Nato countries, Russia took the next step in abandoning the key arms control deal, with president Vladimir Putin signing a law to suspend it. In Madrid, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told the ministers that the treaty was losing its links with reality.
“Our Western partners in Nato de facto introduced a moratorium on the revised CFE in 2001,” Lavrov said. “Although Russia had fulfilled its obligations related to the treaty by that time, Nato countries began tying up the start of ratification of the revised CFE to concocted conditions that had nothing to do with the document.”
Nato countries have insisted that Russia fulfils its Istanbul commitments to withdraw its armed forces and military bases from Moldova and Georgia. However, Lavrov said that his country was open for dialogue “in a quest for a mutually acceptable solution” even after Russian suspension of the treaty comes into force at midnight on December 12.
“Until then we are going to see real dialogue,” Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin said to reporters in Madrid.
Even harsher words were exchanged over the OSCE election monitoring body which pulled out of the Russian parliamentary election on December 2. Earlier, Russia proposed changes to the ODIHR, to dramatically limit the number of observers as well as their right to comment on elections right after polls closed. On November 29, the US representative to the OSCE bluntly accused Russia of working to weaken the organisation and its election monitoring mission.
“We fear that the fundamental understanding of how to achieve democratic peace in Europe has been under assault from within this organisation,” US under secretary for political affairs Nicholas Burns said in a speech to ministers. Earlier, he told a news conference that Washington would not “give a millimetre of opening” to such proposals.
Russian foreign minister Lavrov was as forthright in his reply later the same day. “The OSCE has become a tool used for political purposes by one group of nations against another group of nations,” he said. The Russian reform proposal for the ODIHR was not adopted by the meeting. 
Closely linked to the ODIHR issue was another bone of contention, the chairmanship of the OSCE.
After opposing Kazakhstan’s bid for a two-year chairmanship-in-office, the US agreed to support it after the former Soviet state pledged to protect the OSCE election monitoring body, meaning that Russia lost an important ally of its proposal for reforming the ODIHR. Kazakhstan will chair the OSCE in 2010, following Finland and Greece. In a speech at the meeting, Kazakh foreign minister Marat Tazhin also promised that his country would reform its election legislation and take steps to increase media freedom in accordance with OSCE recommendations.
In Madrid the OSCE managed to agree on the need to renew its 1000-person mission in Kosovo, which thus far had been instrumental in promoting the values of democracy in the territory as well as in training police and protecting the Serb minority.
Kosovo was the main topic during a three-hour ministerial working lunch on November 29, a diplomatic source said. However, Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told a news conference in Madrid that talks on practical details of the mission would continue.
“I hope this can be approved before December 10, or before the end of the year by all means,” Moratinos said.
Moscow does not want the OSCE to stay in Kosovo if the province breaks away from Serbia after December 10, when the mediators’ report to the UN is due. US representative Burns said that deciding that the OSCE should withdraw would be “a dramatic mistake”. Most EU countries, including Bulgaria, supported the US position, insisting on keeping the OSCE mission in Kosovo regardless of the territory’s status.
The OSCE also decided to provide training and other support to Afghanistan to police the country’s unruly frontiers.
The last time that an OSCE summit managed to produce a joint concluding declaration was in 2002. Such were the controversies that divided the 2007 Madrid meeting that this year became the latest in which the issuing of a joint declaration proved impossible.
