Union seeks a stronger role within OSCE

Date: 24/10/1996

By Elizabeth Wise

THE EU has been preoccupied for quite some time with the subject of European security.

Already well on the road to creating a European entity within NATO, it has now embarked on the task of amplifying its voice within another international club, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

With the former communist bloc going through a period of constant change, the OSCE is itself examining ways of adapting to meet the new security challenges facing the continent - and the Union is determined to have its say.

“The main goal is that the Union should play a leading role in the OSCE,” said a Danish diplomat, whose country will take over the 55-nation organisation's rotating chairmanship in December and has pushed hard to bring the subject to the fore in EU discussions.

In numerous meetings this month, Union ambassadors and political directors have been laying the groundwork so that when EU foreign ministers meet next week, they can consider how to make the OSCE more effective.

The debate comes just two months before member states will be called on to help decide the OSCE's future at the organisation's summit in December.

Underlining the unique character of the OSCE (it counts among its members all of western, central and eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, the US and Canada), the Union will confirm that the organisation should be able to play a role in enhancing stability which other bodies cannot.

Throughout the war in Chechnya, for instance, the Union and NATO relied on the OSCE to mediate between the feuding parties and work towards a political solution to the conflict.

When they meet this month, EU foreign ministers will prepare the pledge of support they will deliver to the OSCE at its 2-3 December summit in Lisbon.

But their backing is not entirely altruistic. As EU political directors have acknowledged in a preparatory memo to ministers, “the OSCE provides a forum in which the EU sets out its policies and objectives for cooperation throughout the region and secures support for them”.

Perhaps most importantly of all, the Union is counting on the OSCE to help smooth relations between those countries which will join the EU, the Western European Union or NATO in the coming years, and those who will not.

Chief among its worries are the reactions of Russia and Ukraine as the former Soviet satellites are drawn into western clubs.

“The OSCE will be vital in 1997 as the European Union begins to enlarge,” said an EU diplomat.

The organisation also bolsters the Union's demand that the countries it works with should follow established democratic principles. In every cooperation accord it signs with a third country, the EU includes a paragraph on human rights and democracy drawn from OSCE rules.

The Union effectively counts on the organisation to do the groundwork for it in fostering democratic and humane regimes in former communist countries. Union officials hope that the organisation can now bring these concepts to the Mediterranean area, a region in which the EU is expanding its own ties.

EU officials also see a role for the OSCE in promoting regional cooperation, protecting the environment, fighting cross-border drug trafficking, and promoting joint science and technology projects between members.

In addition, they want the OSCE to step up its operational capacity in conflict prevention and crisis management.

Officials credit the OSCE's “quiet diplomacy” in Chechnya with helping to end the war there. They say the joint effort in Bosnia has been “a valuable demonstration of the concept of mutually reinforcing institutions in practice and can be seen as a prototype for the new European security architecture”.

EU governments now want the organisation to build on the rehabilitation work it did in Bosnia in preparing elections, enforcing arms control and monitoring human rights.

In preparing for the OSCE summit, NATO officials have been conducting a similar exercise to that under way in the Union, but perhaps with more urgency.

Moscow has been insisting that the OSCE - and not the military alliance - take the lead in guaranteeing the continent's security.

However, NATO members soundly reject this idea. “NATO would not like to see the super-imposition of a security organisation in the equation,” said a NATO official. “That is not the right place for the OSCE.”

He added, however, that there should be as much interaction between NATO, the EU and the OSCE as possible.

The war in Bosnia has strengthened the cooperation between the three entities, and officials hope dialogue between them will be stepped up on subjects such as Russia and Ukraine.

The OSCE also provides a forum where both NATO and non-alliance members meet, helping to bring some of them closer together. It is, for example, being used for discussions on the European conventional forces treaty (CFE), providing non-participants such as Switzerland, Austria and Sweden with an opportunity to air their views. Another key item currently on the agenda is an idea launched by Moscow at an OSCE meeting two years ago for a security model for the 21st century.

Earlier this month, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel urged the OSCE to use the Lisbon summit to show what a key role it could play in tackling such issues.

The summit, he said, “must send a signal that the OSCE is willing and able to make a considerable independent contribution to the European security architecture”.