Georgia: OSCE Meeting to Focus on European Security

A record-high number of top diplomats is expected to attend the annual ministerial council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that opens on December 4 in Helsinki. The recent Russian-Georgian conflict and its impact on European security may explain why about 50 of the OSCE's 56 foreign ministers have confirmed their participation in the discussions.

Among them is Sergei Lavrov of Russia, who is due to detail Moscow's proposals for a new, legally binding international document to replace the 1999 politically binding Charter for European Security.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko on December 1 said Moscow expected this topic to be the focus of the Helsinki meeting.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev first outlined plans for a new European Security Treaty modeled on the discussions that led to the 1975 Helsinki Final Act and based on the United Nations Charter.

"When one takes a close look at the situation in Europe, one finds it difficult not to come to the conclusion that its current architecture bears the stamp of an ideology inherited from the past," Medvedev said in a June speech in Berlin. He went on to suggest that an "all-European summit" convene to start drafting a new security treaty.

In the Russian president's words, such a pact should help overcome all remnants of the Cold War and clarify Moscow's relations with the Euro-Atlantic community. At the time of Medvedev's visit to Berlin, those relations had already been damaged by NATO's continued expansion, Washington's missile defense plans, Kosovo's independence, and a dispute over the 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, to which Moscow had unilaterally suspended its participation a few months earlier. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Since then, ties have been further strained by the Russian-Georgian armed conflict and Moscow's subsequent decision to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. In the Kremlin's view, those latest developments make it even more necessary to start reflecting on a new European security architecture.

"First of all, Moscow is proposing to look at the Helsinki Act's fundamental principles and see which of them need to be adapted to the new realities and, then, through active multilateral talks, to restore confidence in the field of European security and start working on a new European Security Treaty," Russia's Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily wrote in its weekly defense supplement on November 28.

The newspaper quoted Russian Foreign Ministry officials as saying the new pact should ensure that the security of any given party is not achieved at the expense of others and that the expansion of military alliances does not threaten the security of other parties. Another key point of the Russian proposal is that "no state or international organization should have the exclusive right to sustain peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic [zone]."

Critics suspect the plan aims at undermining the OSCE, NATO, the EU and the CFE Treaty to the benefit of the Moscow-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Russia denies the claim.

Medvedev's proposal has been positively received by some of his Western counterparts. However, disagreements remain over the framework of the proposed security conference.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, last month suggested that an OSCE summit take place in mid-2009 to discuss Medvedev's proposals. "It will not be a conclusive summit, but we could nevertheless lay the foundations of what could lead to an agreement among us," Sarkozy said.

Yet, the Kremlin believes the OSCE is not the proper place for such discussions. Arguing that the 1999 Charter for European Security was adopted at an OSCE summit and that this agreement has proved "inefficient" to maintain peace and stability on the continent, Russia favors a wider forum for discussions that would include the CSTO, the CIS, NATO, and the EU. It has also suggested the UN Geneva headquarters as a possible venue for the conference. "[This option] looks better since it would, from the onset, liberate the whole process from the negative historic memories associated with the OSCE platform," the Nezavisimaya Gazeta commentary stated.

Participants to the Helsinki Ministerial Council are also expected to discuss the fate of the OSCE Mission to Georgia.

The mandate of the mission, which has a field office in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali, expires at the end of December and it is unclear whether it will be renewed. To do so would require the assent of all 56 OSCE participating states.

The Tskhinvali office, which housed the OSCE observing mission in the conflict zone before hostilities between Moscow and Tbilisi broke out, was damaged and evacuated during the August 7-8 shelling of the city by Georgian forces. It has not been reopened.

Russia insists that the modalities of the OSCE's Georgian operations be altered to reflect its recognition of South Ossetia's independence. In particular, it wants the Tskhinvali office to be separated from the mission's Tbilisi headquarters with a specific mandate to be decided in agreement with the South Ossetian government.

Georgian authorities have raised different issues, according to a well-placed Western source, who spoke to EurasiaNet on condition of anonymity. "They made it clear on the sidelines of last month's Georgia talks in Geneva that they want the mission closed down so that the Russians would be left face to face with the EU, whose decisions -- unlike those of the OSCE -- they cannot influence," the source said.

An agreement on the OSCE Mission to Georgia is unlikely to be reached in Helsinki and discussions are expected to continue at the organization's Vienna headquarters throughout the month. Heikki Talvitie, the special envoy of the OSCE Finnish chairman-in-office, is due to travel to Moscow in mid-December to raise the issue with Russian and South Ossetian officials.