Joao Soares elected new President of OSCE Parliamentary Assembly

ASTANA, 3 July 2008 - Joao Soares of Portugal was today elected new President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (PA) at its Annual Session in Kazakhstan's capital Astana. He succeeds Goran Lennmarker of Sweden, who has served the maximum two years.

Joao Soares, elected for the customary one-year term, has been involved in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly since 2002, both as deputy head and, presently, as head of the Portuguese delegation. He has been a Vice President of OSCE PA and a member of the Assembly's Bureau since July 2006.

"I strongly believe in the OSCE and its parliamentary dimension," said Joao Soares upon being elected. "The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly has a pivotal role in the future of the whole Organization: promoting the dialogue between all participating States in an inclusive manner, ensuring the respect for the OSCE founding principles and acting towards the resolution of all forms of conflicts. This should be our task, to continue the work that has so bravely started in 1975."

Soares is a veteran election observer, having participated in numerous election observation missions, including in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tajikistan, Serbia, and Russia. Several times he was head and deputy head of the OSCE PA delegation. He he led the OSCE PA's observation mission to the May parliamentary elections in Georgia, where he also served as Special Co-ordinator of all OSCE short-term observers, appointed by the OSCE Chairman-in-Office.

Soares, a socialist, has been a member of the Portuguese parliament from 1987 to 1990 and again since 2002, elected by the constituency of Lisbon. He is also a member of the Parliamentary Committee on National Defense. He is the former deputy mayor and mayor of Lisbon and is Chairman of the Union of Capital Cities of Portuguese Language (UCCLA). He was a member of Portugal's State Council between 1998 and 2002.

Soares is a former member of the European Parliament and of the Bureau of the European Parliament. He has a law degree and is a lawyer and editor. He is married with five children.

The delegates at the Assembly's Annual Session also elected four new Vice Presidents: Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kazakhstan; Wolfgang Grossruck, Austria; Pia Christmas-Moeller, Denmark; and Oleh Bilorus, Ukraine.

The parliamentarians of the OSCE also adopted the Astana Declaration, which contains recommendations as well as 19 resolutions. The Declaration will now be shared with all governments of the OSCE, and is available in English, Russian and French on the OSCE PA website: www.oscepa.org.