CIS Executive Secretary addresses OSCE Permanent Council, stresses co-operation in addressing new security challenges, observing elections

VIENNA, 22 July 2010 - Addressing the OSCE Permanent Council today, the Executive Secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Sergey Lebedev, emphasized the need to develop co-operation between international organizations to ensure stability, facilitate conflict settlement in the OSCE and CIS areas, and stressed the importance of joint work in other fields, including election observation.

Lebedev noted the importance of Kazakhstan holding the OSCE Chairmanship as the first CIS country, and emphasized that all CIS countries supported its initiative to hold an OSCE summit this autumn in Astana.

Lebedev said that in the field of counteracting global challenges and threats, CIS states take into account "the leading role of the UN and the necessity to develop co-operation with other international institutions, including the OSCE".

In this regard, he highlighted the importance of the meeting of the heads of international organizations, including the OSCE and the CIS that took place on 17 July in Almaty. "These meetings allow an exchange of opinions about the situation in the world and facilitate further strengthening of trust and mutual understanding. This expands interaction in ensuring security both within the OSCE, and within other international organizations' areas of work," he said.

Discussing hotspots existing today in the OSCE and in the CIS areas, Lebedev welcomed significant efforts of the OSCE in settlement of conflicts on the territory of OSCE participating States and paid special attention to the recent crisis in Kyrgyzstan. "In the settlement of internal crisis in Kyrgyzstan CIS states have actively interacted with the OSCE and the UN," he said. Lebedev emphasized that the CIS has a substantial toolkit to search for ways to resolve conflicts, and noted that "the Executive Committee of the CIS is always ready to co-operate with the OSCE and other international organizations in this uneasy task".

An important part of OSCE-CIS co-operation, Lebedev said, is monitoring elections in the CIS countries. "In the process of monitoring we maintain constant working contacts with observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and exchange opinions about the election campaign and its results," he said. "Interaction in the monitoring process allows us to carry out a more objective assessment of the elections that took place, and to identify how the election process can be improved."

All 11 CIS countries (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine) are OSCE participating States.

The Permanent Council is a main decision-making body of the 56-country OSCE. It meets weekly in Vienna to discuss developments in the OSCE area and to make appropriate decisions.