OSCE important tool to find new ways to solve military problems, says Polish ex-president

VIENNA, 19 June 2007 - It is time to look at military problems in a different way and avoid a return to Cold War rhetoric, and the OSCE is well placed to help countries do this, former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski told the Organization's Annual Security Review Conference today.

"In the Cold War, arms control was supposed to reduce the probability of the outbreak of war. The new type of arms control should completely eliminate such a possibility and I see an important role to find a solution for your Organization," he said.

"The time has come to look in a different manner at new military problems of the security dimension. Instead of confrontation and suspicion, to see new opportunities of co-operation and building trust based on new terms. A return to the method of thinking and the rhetoric of the Cold War will get us nowhere."

Former President Kwasniewski said this approach applied to the debate about U.S. plans for a missile defence system in Europe. He also praised the OSCE's work in tackling the politico-military aspects of security.

Spanish Ambassador Carlos Sanchez de Boado urged participants in the opening session of the Annual Security Review Conference to hold a frank and open debate and focus on issues that they have in common.

"We are not overlooking the legitimate discrepancies which still persist in important questions of security related to arms control in the geographic space of the OSCE," he said, speaking on behalf of the Spanish OSCE Chairmanship.

De Boado used his speech to make an appeal to the OSCE's 56 participating States.

"We should resolve to settle all questions of a controversial nature together, seeking common ground on the basis of all the negotiation formats available to us which offer a maximum of efficiency," he said.

"We must seek what unites us rather than dwell on what separates us and gives rise to differences."

Croatian Ambassador Vladimir Matek, the chairperson of the OSCE Forum for Security Co-operation, noted in his speech the OSCE played an "indispensable role in discussing military aspects of security, arms control and confidence-building in the Euro-Atlantic region."

The two-day meeting, the fifth of its kind, focuses on the OSCE Strategy to Address Threats to Security and Stability in the Twenty-First Century, challenges in the politico-military dimension of security, and on OSCE activities in early warning, conflict prevention and resolution, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation.