Will wait until next December

Kazakhstan received a promise from the OSCE

The name of the country that will be entrusted to lead the OSCE in 2009 remains unknown. The inability to reach a compromise on the candidacy of the future OSCE chairman turned out to be one of the main results of the annual session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of this organization, which has 56 states in its ranks, which ended yesterday in Brussels. The main candidate for the chairmanship was Kazakhstan. And Vremya Novostey's forecast was justified - the decision was postponed until the next, 15th meeting of the OSCE Council of Ministers, which will be held in December 2007 in Madrid, since from the beginning of next year the chairmanship of the organization will pass from Belgium to Spain.

According to Michael Laubsch, a German expert on Central Asia and director of the Eurasian Transit Group, this event in Brussels is “unique in the history of the OSCE.” “Never before has it happened that members of an organization were unable to reach agreement on the issue of leadership in their organization,” Mr. Laubsch said in an interview with Vremya Novostey. “Of course, what happened did not bring joy to the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who arrived in Brussels these days to convince skeptics from the United States and the European Union of the validity of his country’s claims to leadership in the OSCE,” he believes.

Mr Nazarbayev was in the spotlight for three days. In Brussels, the President of Kazakhstan held talks with the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, and signed a memorandum of understanding with the EU on cooperation in the field of energy. This ceremony took place on December 4, on the eve of the decisive vote at the OSCE Ministerial Council on Kazakhstan's candidacy. And President Nazarbayev, after meeting with Mr. Barroso, could not hide what worried him most at that moment. Reflecting on the achievements of his country, in which “representatives of 130 nationalities and 46 religions live peacefully and together,” which represents “invaluable experience for the OSCE,” Mr. Nazarbayev said that “it would be very important to ensure support from the European Union for Kazakhstan’s candidacy.” .

This statement put the President of the European Commission in an awkward position. “Sorry, but the European Commission has absolutely no position on this issue and there is no need to resolve this issue,” Barroso replied.

“Now that the decision has been postponed until December 2007, all options remain open for Kazakhstan,” says Michael Laubsch. “Astana will be able to achieve its goal and lead the OSCE if it manages to carry out a number of internal reforms in the remaining time and demonstrate that it complies with OSCE standards in the field of human rights, media freedom and the activities of political parties.”

Arkady DUBNOV, Brussels