To follow up on my earlier post, I recommend RFE/RL’s coverage of OSCE consideration of Russian demands for changes to the body.
I’m apparently not the only one who wonders whether or not the OSCE serves much of a purpose.
Most Western delegations acknowledge that 30 years after the OSCE was founded in 1975, its institutions are in need of a shake-up. They also acknowledge that the European Union has become a competitor to the OSCE in some political areas and it must adapt if it is to maintain its credibility.
A Dutch political expert, Jan-Herman van Roijen, believes OSCE’s future may depend on the way it responds to the challenges it is now facing. “At present the OSCE is confronted with serious challenges to what it will be able to provide in future years,” Van Roijen told RFE/RL. “In other words — the basic question of its political relevancy. The OSCE is clearly at a crossroads.”
As mentioned way back, Russia wants changes made to both the OSCE’s military agreements and to its political work. RFE/RL has details on what specifically it is that Russia wants changed about the organization’s election monitoring.
Russia is particularly critical of the OSCE’s most sensitive agency, the Office of Democratic Institutions (ODIHR), which is responsible for election monitoring. Russia dislikes its custom of issuing a comment on elections soon after the polls close. In Russia’s view, ODIHR should submit its reports to the Permanent Council in Vienna and allow it to decide whether they should be published.
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Recently, Russia has alleged that some Western election monitors interfere in the internal affairs of the country to which they were posted. Among the critics is Russian Central Election Commission Chairman Aleksandr Veshnyakov, who told a meeting in Vienna in April that some countries try to use the electoral process to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.Some Russian officials claim that Western election monitors played a role in the postelection upheavals in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. The accusations are rejected by international election experts
I absolutely adore that Russia has the stones to be making these kinds of charges considering the track record of Russian CIS election monitors. (Am I making it up, or were some of them arrested in Moldova for interfering in a recent election.)
Russia wants the Permanent Council–in which all decisions require unanimous support–to consider the reports so that it gains a veto over Western criticism of states in its near abroad.
And again, I find Russia’s approach in general to the OSCE (with an red circle around and an exclamation point by their refusal to attend this meeting) reason for laughter. After all, the behavior doesn’t exactly mesh with the rhetoric surrounding their new Eurasia policy. But I guess that when they say something like,
“The goal is that relations between Moscow and Washington and European countries on the territory of the former Soviet Union acquire a civilized character.”
they mean that the West should keep its nose out of what Russia considers its business. Sounds like the same old, same old to me.
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