The OSCE adopted tough resolutions regarding Russia, Uzbekistan and the United States

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Yesterday the session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (PA) ended in Washington. The final chord turned out to be scandalous - the Moldovan delegation left the meeting room in protest against the resolution regarding the Transnistrian settlement that was too soft, in its opinion. The Georgian delegation, on the contrary, did not go anywhere, although it was offended by Lyubov Sliska, who called Georgia a “province”. And in the end, she achieved the adoption of a rather tough resolution on Abkhazia.

The session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly lasted five days. Even at the very beginning, the Russian delegation, headed by State Duma Vice-Speaker Lyubov Sliskaya, was in a very fighting mood and promised to give battle to the OSCE - especially since the Russian authorities have recently accumulated many claims against this organization. Moscow was most concerned about the OSCE observation missions monitoring the elections. Ms. Sliska complained that the OSCE was particularly biased towards the CIS countries, and demanded the development of uniform standards that would oblige observers to monitor elections equally in both the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. “There should be no favorites or stepchildren here,” said the vice speaker, “however, the American side has put forward proposals that will completely disavow our amendments. I think we will have to have a serious conversation with them.”

It is unclear whether the conversation turned out to be serious enough, but nothing appeared in the text of the final Washington declaration that “elections in both the Western and Eastern Hemispheres must be approached with the same standards.” The authors of the text limited themselves to only recommending “to establish OSCE election observation standards as a guiding principle for observation missions.”

The Moldovan delegation suffered even greater disappointment in Washington. Representatives of Chisinau did not like the draft resolution on Moldova, written by Finnish deputy Kimmo Kiljunen. It said that the authorities of Moldova and Transnistria should “resume, in good faith, serious negotiations in order to find a lasting solution to the problem.” However, the Moldovan delegation, which included three radical politicians, demanded that the resolution call the Transnistrian authorities “the criminal separatist Tiraspol regime.” After the Parliamentary Assembly refused them, the delegates from Chisinau left the meeting room.

As a result, the resolution was adopted almost without taking into account the amendments from Moldova. The OSCE PA supported Viktor Yushchenko's initiatives on the Transnistrian settlement, in particular his proposal to create an international peacekeeping mechanism in this region under the auspices of the OSCE.

But the OSCE resolution on Abkhazia turned out to be much more critical. Even at the beginning of the OSCE session, a disagreement broke out between the leaders of the Russian and Georgian delegations. Already in Washington, Lyubov Sliska gave an interview to the NTV television company in which she said: “Well, really, with some province like Georgia, where there are 2.5 million people, we are beginning to sort things out as with a serious, large state.” Speaker of the Georgian Parliament Nino Burjanadze, who represented Tbilisi at the OSCE PA session, was offended and said that she “did not expect that Ms. Sliska would look at sovereign states like that.”

Therefore, Mrs. Burjanadze devoted her stay in Washington to developing a resolution on Abkhazia, which was adopted. In the text of the resolution, the OSCE PA calls on Russia to “refrain from any actions that impede the peace process in Abkhazia”, expresses “deep regret at the lack of progress towards a peaceful settlement” and recalls “the international obligation of the Russian Federation to promote and ensure dialogue between the parties to the conflict ".

Obviously, trying to demonstrate to the Russian delegation its impartiality, the OSCE PA adopted rather tough resolutions regarding the United States and Uzbekistan. On the initiative of Belgian Senator Anne-Marie Lisin, who was denied access to the Guantanamo Bay base, the assembly called on the United States to liquidate the naval base and hand over the prisoners there to the authorities of their countries or to the civilian jurisdiction of the United States. OSCE representatives were not allowed into Andijan to conduct an independent investigation there. In the final declaration, the Parliamentary Assembly demanded that Tashkent “hold accountable those found to have used excessive force and committed other violations during and after the demonstration,” and if the Uzbek authorities refused to cooperate, they proposed sending a special emergency OSCE mission there.

MIKHAIL Kommersant-ZYGAR, VLADIMIR Kommersant-SOLOVIEV

Comprehensive condemnation