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Author : Marc Perrin
de Brichambaut OSCE Secretary General
I think the Astana Summit turned out to be a very pos-
itive summit. Twenty-five heads of state were there
plus the others at a very high level. It was quite an
achievement for our organization. It put back into the
limelight the issues of pan-European security after a
period where there was much doubt and problems. We
managed to have an excellent declaration after many
years in which we had problems. The fact is that it in-
cludes a very powerful recommitment to upholding
the main values, standards and commitments of the
organization; the fact is that it is very forward-looking and spans a large spectrum of activities.
That's really a big boost for the organization.
And then there's what you don't necessarily see with the naked eye. All that was made possible by
a new quality of relationships, particularly between the Russian Federation, the United States and
the EU.
Your Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave an interview right after the summit. It is an in-depth
and high-caliber text which deserves being studied. In fact, I distributed this text at a recent meeting
in Vienna because I thought that all the political scientists and analysts who were there could
benefit from it. It is a very balanced and fair account of what happened in Astana.
The OSCE would not have survived and continued to function without the goodwill and attention
of the Russian Federation in recent years. But it needs support from everybody else. And that's
where things are more complicated.
Your minister contributed to overcoming the problem by his continued engagement with the
OSCE. By the positive instructions he gave to try and reach consensus in Astana, and by promoting
the summit with successful substance he greatly helped address this problem of identity.
We have very good informal relationship between the OSCE and the CSTO. Secretary General
Bordyuzha visits Vienna often; he addressed the Permanent Council, I addressed the CSTO am-
bassadors. We recently were on the telephone when the new initiative on security in Kyrgyzstan
was adopted. I informed him of what was going to happen so that he could have a good under-
standing of what we were trying to do, how soon and where, and so on. We are being regularly in-
vited to the Kanal operation events of the CSTO.
We had difficult moments. One was in August of 2008. We also had some happy moments that
brought me personal satisfaction. A few things I achieved personally, like convincing Australia to
become an Asian partner in cooperation. And we have, for instance, a big mélange disposal project
in Ukraine on which I worked very hard. And there is another project we managed to put together
in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to guard borders between Central Asian states and Afghanistan. These
are the things I worked on quite hard and with great satisfaction. We worked closely and in harmony
together with our Russian partners.
The OSCE Reinvigorated