OSCE inaugurates Annual Security Review Conference in Vienna

VIENNA, 25 June 2003 - Opening the OSCE's first-ever Annual Security Review Conference, Ambassador Daan Everts, Head of the OSCE Task Force of the Netherlands Chairmanship, called for the meeting to produce practical tasks and recommendations on how the OSCE should address the threats and challenges to the collective security of the 55 participating States.

Delivering the keynote speech on behalf of the Chairman-in-Office, Dutch Foreign Minister, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, he said the purpose of the conference was to take stock of developments in the OSCE's security dimension and to come up with fresh, updated analysis and ideas with regard to the OSCE role in that connection.

"Our common task at this conference is clear: what do we think of the way the OSCE has been dealing with its security related tasks, and in which way - given an enlarging European Union and NATO - should the OSCE adjust to these changing threats and challenges to security."

He added that the two-day event in the Hofburg Congress Centre, Vienna, would focus, on the emergence of the threat of terrorism as the most obvious of the dramatic changes in the last few years.

"But especially as the OSCE, we should be concerned as well by undemocratic responses to new threats in the form of intolerance, xenophobia, the curtailment of democratic and human rights", said Ambassador Everts. "They too pose a challenge to human security and undermine the open, transparent character of society."

The second keynote speaker, Adam Rotfeld, Deputy Foreign Minster of Poland, also drew attention to the challenge posed by the events of 11 September, and the present state of Euro-Atlantic relations.

"Are the existing international security structures, including the OSCE, adequate to the new times? Security is not a state but a dynamic process. Institutions and organizations have a static nature. It is crucial to adjust the OSCE institutions to the needs and requirements of the time."

Ambassador Dieter Boden, Chairman of the Forum for Security Co-operation (FSC), the OSCE's main regular body dealing with politico-military security, described in his introduction to the conference, how the FSC was already adapting its role to the new challenges and carrying out an intense review of all existing commitments and instruments of OSCE's "first dimension" - politico-military security.

"This is being done with a view to identifying their specific quality for combating the new threats to security", he said.

Citing the OSCE's Small Arms and Light Weapons Document (which deals with limiting the illicit flow of arms into actual or potential conflict areas) as one instance where the FSC had developed its role, he said that to facilitate the implementation of the document's recommendations, the FSC had developed a Handbook of Best Practice Guides, as well as a mechanism to implement the document.

Among the other scheduled keynote speakers are Cofer Black, Co-ordinator for Counter-Terrorism in the US Department of State, Alexander Grushko, Director of the Department for European Co-operation in the Russian Foreign Ministry, and Gilles Adreani, Director of the Policy Planning Unit of the French Foreign Ministry.

Around 300 participants, comprising political and military experts from the 55 States participating in the Organization, will be examining such areas as preventing and combating terrorism, comprehensive security, security risks and challenges across the OSCE region and conflict prevention and crisis management.

Background information and speeches will be posted on a special conference website, as and when these become available.