Chairman of OSCE's Permanent Council underscores transparency of Organization's activity in Georgia

VIENNA, 4 September 2008 - The Chairman of the OSCE Permanent Council, Ambassador Antti Turunen, underscored today that the Organization had distributed all spot reports submitted by its Mission to Georgia on the recent Georgia-Russia conflict to all 56 OSCE participating States.

"All the information that we have received, you have received," Turunen, who is the Finnish Ambassador to the OSCE, told the Permanent Council, referring to spot reports which are compiled by OSCE field missions and sent to all OSCE delegations.

"As you know, there is nothing in the reports of the monitors that would corroborate the report in Der Spiegel," he said, referring to a story in the latest issue of the German news magazine.

Turunen said the Finnish Chairmanship was urging other participating States to help reach swift consensus on modalities for the deployment of 80 additional monitoring officers. The OSCE already agreed to send 20 and most of this first contingent are already deployed.

The Permanent Council, one of the main regular decision-making bodies of the Organization, convenes weekly in Vienna to discuss developments in the OSCE area and to make appropriate decisions.