Foreign Minister Knut Vollebæk

The Norwegian Chairmanship of the OSCE - a preliminary summing up

Oslo Military Society, 4 October 1999

Your Majesty,

Introduction

This autumn, it will be ten years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

At that time, I had just taken up my duties as State Secretary at the Foreign Ministry. On 9 and 10 November, I was at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.

On the morning of the 10th, November I had a meeting with NATO Secretary General Manfred Wørner. It was a meeting I will never forget that meeting. At that time, Wwe scarcely dared believe to hope for what we have witnessed in the course of this decadethat this was really happening.

The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), now the OSCE, has played a central role in the events we have seen during these years. Respect for democracy, pluralism and human rights has regained a foothold in many of the former Communist states.

We have also witnessed a number of attempts to put up new walls between people in our own part of the world. New conflicts have entered brutally into our lives. At the time when the wall fell, few people would have predicted that these things would happen.

I have just returned from a tour of Central Asia. Later this week, I will make another visit to Kosovo.

I will therefore focus on developments in these areas this evening as I sum up some of my main impressions after ten months as Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE.

During the Kosovo conflict, the OSCE underwent the most dramatic and challenging period in its existence. The organization is now in the process of drafting a security pact for Europe. This makes it even more important for the OSCE to look more closely at the work of the organization.

Did we make the right priorities? Should we have gone about things differently? Can we make the OSCE better able to prevent new conflicts from arising in the future?

This evening, I will try to answer these questions, although I know of course that the time for a thorough assessment of the Norwegian chairmanship is after it is over.

Although it is too early to draw any definite conclusions, I think it is possible to identify some important lessons and trends, particularly in the light of Kosovo.

Norwegian priorities

The Norwegian chairmanship’s priorities for the work of the OSCE have always been clear:

i) Firstly, we have adhered to what may be considered the OSCE’s core functions, i.e. the promotion of human rights, the principles of the rule of law and democracy. The most important contribution the OSCE has made towards long-term conflict prevention is what is known as the “human dimension” of international security.

The paradox of the last decade is that military conflicts in Europe have once more demonstrated the importance of the non-military aspects of security.

In Kosovo, we are in the process of training police officers and public officials, we are monitoring human rights, helping to develop a free press and independent organizations and political parties, and we will in due course plan and hold elections. We have also devoted a great deal of time and energy to developing democratic institutions in various countries, including those applying for membership of NATO and the EU.

In our work on the human dimension, we have also stressed the importance of the connection between culture, religious dialogue and conflict prevention. If we cannot even get the representatives of different ethnic groups to play on the same football team, what hope is there of getting them to cooperate on a political solution? If it is not even possible for religious leaders to agree on how peace can be attained, what chance do peace conferences have of succeeding?

But if, for example, we can get Serbs and Bosnians to pull together, and if we can get Orthodox priests and Muslim imams to talk to each other, we know that this will send a very strong signal. This is a political language that is understood by everybody.

Today, cCulture and religion have become symbols of war and conflict in many parts of the world. This is nothing new. However, culture and religion are in essence the opposite of conflict. This is why they are both such important tools in conflict prevention. As Chairman-in-Office, we have taken a number of initiatives to raise awareness of this fact in the organization both centrally and in the missions in the various OSCE member states.

ii) The second main priority for the Norwegian chairmanship has been the efforts to enhance security and stability in the entire OSCE area.

Even though the Balkans and Kosovo have been the main focus of attention, iIt is my view feel that we have also made a significant contribution in other existing or potential conflict areas, not least in the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is vital that we maintain our involvement in these two regions.

In the course of our chairmanship, OSCE offices have been set up in all the countries in these two regions. During my visit to the Caucasus, I signed an agreement to establish a mission in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. In Baku, the Azerbaijan government approved the establishment of a mission to the country. This gives us a ground presence that is invaluable in a region where a number of conflicts remain unresolved.

Thus we have directed attention to the Caucasus and Central Asia in the course of our chairmanship.

However, this is not enough. How do we generate the political will and the financial resources to prevent new conflicts from breaking out? How are we going to build consensus on strengthening preventive diplomacy in Nagorno-Karabakh when Kosovo and Bosnia lay claim to such enormous resources?

This is the dilemma the OSCE faces every day. The organization has an important but thankless task. CNN does not include preventive diplomacy in its news coverage. A non-conflict is simply a non-issue.

It is easy to count the failures in international crisis management. No one keeps an account of the success stories.

If the OSCE is to succeed in preventing new conflicts in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the organization must take a more regional approach to conflict management.

We must focus our attention on the whole of the Balkans, not just on Kosovo. We must look at the whole of the Caucasus, not just Nagorno-Karabakh. This is the challenge we are facing.

The tragic war in Chechnya ended three years ago. Now there are new hostilities and terrorist operations there. The end of the war did not bring a genuine peace. A new breeding ground was created for economic and social problems, religious fundamentalism and terrorism.

This has resulted in an unfortunate situation for the population and has had a destabilizing effect in the northern Caucasus. The current hostilities are further exacerbating the humanitarian situation. The use of force may have negative consequences throughout the region.

The OSCE has dispatched a support group to Chechnya, which has been forced to stay in Moscow for the past few months because of the security situation. Nonetheless, the group affords us an opportunity to assist in finding a peaceful solution. We have made this clear to the Russian authorities, but the response thus far has been negative. I discussed this matter with Deputy Foreign Minister Gusarov when I had a stopover in Moscow earlier today.

This clearly illustrates the dilemma facing the OSCE. Preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution only work if the parties are interested in making use of the organization. Being forced to stand on the sidelines and watch a conflict unfold is not satisfactory. It is difficult to explain to the general public, and this may in the long-term undermine the OSCE’s credibility.

Ethnic conflict is often rooted in the economic and social disparities in a region - both within and across national borders. Regional economic growth and reduced poverty provide the best basis for security and cooperation.

Our work on the human dimension has an economic dimension, and vice versa. We hope that Aa regional strategy will yield results and will make the results achieved more visible.

iii) Our third main priority has been to strengthen the organizational structure of the OSCE.

The OSCE is rather unique in having a very small administrative apparatus. This is what gives the organization its flexibility and its adaptability, qualities we have been very concerned about preserving. However, it has been necessary to make organizational changes because of the increase in the number of OSCE tasks and the size of several of the new missions.

Two years ago, Foreign Minister Bjørn Tore Godal stood here on this podium and said the following about our forthcoming OSCE chairmanship: “I think it is wise to expect the unexpected. It is unlikely that the Danes expected the Albania crisis, which laid claim to most of their time and attention in the introductory phase of their chairmanship. I doubt whether the Hungarians expected the crisis in Chechnya to dominate their chairmanship in 1995 as much as it did, any more than the Swiss could predict that implementation of the Dayton Agreement would be their main focus in 1996.”

I can subscribe to this. The chairmanship’s capacity to pursue its own priorities is limited. Political events call for immediate attention and thus require resources.

In our case, the Kosovo conflict has definitely been our most difficult task. The OSCE was aware of the possibility that Kosovo would explode. Therefore, the OSCE, together with a number of other organizations, made persistent attempts to bring the violence in the province to an end.

Countless efforts were made last autumn, last winter and into the spring to persuade President Milosevic to consent to a peace agreement. As time passed, these were accompanied by serious warnings of what the consequences would be if Milosevic continued to say no. This is also what I emphasized when I telephoned him only hours before the bombing started on 24 March.

On two occasions, last autumn and early this year, it seemed that Milosevic was ready to give in when faced with the threat of armed intervention by the international community. His failure do so in March in connection with the Rambouillet negotiations ought to give us food for thought. Perhaps the signals he was getting from the international community were simply too conflicting.

The Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) is the most complex operation the OSCE has ever conducted. However, it demonstrated that unarmed observers are not a sufficient means of preventing conflict when the parties themselves do not refrain from violence. It was my responsibility to pull the mission out when the security situation made it indefensible to continue. It was a tough decision to make, but a necessary one. Today’s UN-led Kosovo operation (UNMIK) has, however, given the OSCE important new tasks to carry out.

The way in which the Kosovo operation was handled is a clear indication that the work of building a European security architecture and adapting the various institutions to crisis management tasks of this kind has not yet been completed.

Responsibility and tasks must be shared. There is a growing awareness of this. However, I make no secret of the fact that it is sometimes difficult to get organizations such as the UN, NATO, the EU and the OSCE to work together.

Therefore, the international community, spearheaded by the UN, is standing at a number of crossroads as regards international peace and security in the years ahead. Regardless of the outcome of the choices that are made, the significance of our experience in Kosovo will be felt far beyond the Balkans.

Some preliminary conclusions

I would now like to share with you three of the most important conclusions I have arrived at so far as Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE.

The first is that preventive diplomacy must be strengthened.

In the Kosovo crisis, an extensive military operation was chosen as a last resort. Taking up arms is a failure in itself. It is a brutal means of employing force that incurs enormous human and material costs, even with the benefit of the most modern technology.

NATO’s military action has provoked criticism from many quarters. Here in Norway we have also had a heated debate as to whether this was the right thing to do. This debate is a healthy sign, and I have taken part both as OSCE Chairman-in-Office and as foreign minister.

However, we must not merely criticize an international community that takes action. We must also address a larger problem - that of an international community that fails to act at all.

This was one of the main themes of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s statement at this year’s UN general assembly. He referred to the lack of will to intervene in the Rwanda conflict. If a coalition of states had stood ready to move into the country, would it have been right to allow horrendous atrocities to continue pending a clear mandate from the Security Council?

Secretary-General Annan put his finger on the greatest dilemma in crisis management today. If we tie ourselves to the mast and insist on the requirement of a mandate from the Security Council, we will also have tied our own hands if one of the five permanent members lays down a veto.

If, on the other hand, we no longer require an explicit UN mandate, we will be lowering the threshold for misuse of intervention for the purpose of achieving other political objectives. Such a development could in itself become a source of conflict.

This is the dilemma facing us today.

According to Secretary-General Annan, the solution will ultimately lie in how we define national interests and national sovereignty. It is in our common interest to deal with conflicts without resorting to military force, i.e. before military force becomes necessary.

In my opinion, there is a clear need for a renaissance in long-term conflict prevention. The primary tasks of the OSCE lie in early warning, preventive diplomacy, settling conflicts and rebuilding confidence.

With hindsight, it is clear that the international community did not do enough in the 1990s to prevent the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia from escalating. It is always difficult to attract sufficient attention to crisis prevention.

At the same time, we know the costs that will be incurred later if we do not give this priority. “The costliest peace is far cheaper than the cheapest war,” as President Clinton so aptly put it.

I think it will be a long time before we witness another international operation on the scale we have seen in Kosovo. The threshold for implementation of peace operations of this magnitude has risen. In the light of this, it is even more important that the OSCE intensify its efforts to prevent conflicts in its area of responsibility in close cooperation with other institutions.

As I mentioned by way of introduction, I returned today from a visit to the five OSCE countries in Central Asia - Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kirgizstan and Kazakhstan. I also visited the three member states in the southern Caucasus a few weeks ago. Both regions pose major challenges for the OSCE.

Although terrorist groups have taken control of parts of southern Kirgizstan, the situation in Central Asia is mainly calm. However, there is still considerable potential for conflict. The region consists of former Soviet republics, i.e. of young, newly established states. The countries are struggling with serious economic and social problems. The political culture is authoritarian. There are widespread violations of human rights. The countries’ leaders distrust each other and feel threatened by both internal and external enemies.

The best metaphor for Central Asia is perhaps that of a pressure cooker. Rigid political systems are keeping a lid on the situation. There is considerable fear of the spread of fundamentalist Islam. There is extensive trafficking in arms and drugs. And the spectre of Afghanistan is lurking in the background.

Relations between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, which are the strongest military powers in the region, are already tense. The rebel groups now in Kirgizstan come from these two countries.

The Both Central Asia and the Caucasus is a are regions with large energy resources. However, tand its strategic significance differs from that of Central Asia. The three OSCE countries in the Caucasus, – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, – have better economic short-term economic prospects than the Central Asian republics.

The southern part of the region is also the scene of three “frozen” conflicts – in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In addition, there are new developments in the northern Caucasus, in Chechnya and Dagestan.

The conflicts in the southern Caucasus have largely been forgotten by the media. This does not mean that the refugee problems are any less severe or that their causes have disappeared. In addition to the Balkans, this may prove to be a major conflict-prevention task for the OSCE in the future.

When I was in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, I had an opportunity to visit the Martyrs’ Cemetery. There you can walk along row upon row of graves belonging to young soldiers who lost their lives in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. These are the graves not only of individuals, but of a whole generation. And in addition, around a million people have fled their homes.

In brief, the conflict concerns what status this overwhelmingly Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh enclave should have within Azerbaijan. If the OSCE can help to settle this conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, this will defuse a volatile internal political situation in both countries.

Above all, this will permit approximately one million refugees and internally displaced persons to return to their homes. It will enable the normalization of bilateral relations and pave the way for economic cooperation and growth in the region.

Even though such a development is still far in the future, there are grounds for optimism. Not primarily because of the recent exchange of prisoners-of-war, although this is of great symbolic importance. I have two other reasons for being optimistic: both parties have acknowledged that they must compromise, and both believe that the other is genuinely interested in resolving the conflict. This may in part be due to the serious situation in the northern Caucasus and to fears that the unrest in Chechnya and Dagestan will spread to the south.

Both parties have said that they need the OSCE as a multilateral framework for negotiating a compromise. They trust the organization, and want it to play a role in the region.

We must take advantage of this situation. The OSCE must maintain the momentum up to the summit in Istanbul next month, and take steps to facilitate continued dialogue. We ourselves are arranging a meeting in Oslo later this week with the three co-chairmen of the Minsk Group (i.e. representatives from the USA, Russia and France), which is the OSCE’s special forum for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Both in the Caucasus and in Central Asia the OSCE’s main task must be draw these countries into international cooperation. The countries of Central Asia are favourably disposed to using the OSCE as a channel to the Western world. During the Norwegian chairmanship, I have stressed the importance of taking advantage of this in laying the groundwork for a dialogue. These efforts will become increasingly important in the years ahead.

We must help them to comply with their obligations as members of the OSCE. , and they must assist us.At the same time, Wwe must demand that they face up to their responsibilities. This applies especially to the principles of the rule of law, respect for human rights and the holding of elections. Here we are facing major challenges.

Our second conclusion is that we must develop sub-regional strategies for the work of the OSCE.

Bosnia, Albania and now Kosovo have taught us that even when a political solution is in place, regional stability in the Balkans will continue to be threatened for a long time to come. We must therefore implement long-term stability measures to counteract the negative regional consequences of a conflict.

This is the background for the Stability Pact for South East Europe, which is the result of an initiative by the German EU Presidency, and which was adopted at the EU summit in Cologne in June.

Security and stability cannot be built within the narrow confines of national borders. As a former mediator in the Balkans, as foreign minister and as OSCE Chairman-in-Office, I have been concerned for a long time about the need for a regional approach.

This is why the Stability Pact is so important if we are to succeed in integrating these countries into European cooperation.

Seven countries border on Yugoslavia. The Stability Pact is designed to promote good, close relations between these countries through a network of agreements and bilateral contacts.

We are currently in the process of establishing a separate regional cooperation forum. There the participants will be able to discuss measures to strengthen democracy, respect for human rights, economic growth and thus greater security and stability.

The OSCE constitutes the political framework for the Pact, while the EU will be playing a leading role in the practical implementation. Here, too, distribution of responsibility is the keyword. With the OSCE’s extensive system of field missions and well developed contact network, the organization is well equipped to promote stability, especially with regard to efforts in the field of democracy and human rights.

But the organization will also play an important part in the military field. The first meeting on military security under the Pact will take place in Oslo next week. Norway will play a leading role in this area.

There are now great expectations to both the EU and the OSCE in the region. These countries view the Pact as a means of achieving political and economic development. We must make sure that we fulfil these expectations.

This means that we must give the Pact a definite substance. It means that we must rapidly implement projects. If not, we risk a setback for the reform process.

The parties themselves must also assist in fulfilling the aims of the Pact. Cooperation between the states concerned must be strengthened if the assistance is to be effective. I also wish to emphasize that the Pact not only concerns cooperation between governments. The strengthening of people-to-people contacts is just as important.

Work on the Stability Pact is being carried out in parallel with an increased focus on regional strategies in the OSCE. The missions are currently working on the basis of a mandate associated with the country in which they are operating. Therefore, they have so far not focused on regional issues or coordinated their activities with other missions. This is a drawback.

We have therefore intensified efforts on the Stability Pact by developing a separate regional OSCE track for the Balkans. The head of the Bosnia mission has been charged with examining how we can strengthen our regional strategy. His report will be made available before the OSCE summit in Istanbul in November.

Improved coordination between the missions may help to alleviate suspicion and antagonism between the countries of the region. Increased regional contact may help to reduce distrust. This is the same approach that underlies our initiative to create an OSCE strategy for Central Asia.

Once war has broken out, there are limits to what the OSCE can do. The OSCE had to hand the operation in Kosovo over to NATO. Europe did not manage to resolve the conflict on its own. The help of the USA was needed.

In my view, the Kosovo operation demonstrated above all the importance of allied unity and solidarity. This is the third conclusion I wish to share with you.

A precondition for NATO’s political and military strength was a united stand by a new and expanded NATO. Once more, Kosovo has confirmed the importance of transatlantic cooperation for efficient crisis management.

The operation also demonstrated that the OSCE is not in a position to deal with a military conflict.

There is no doubt that the experience gained in Kosovo will have significance for the way in which the military burden is shared between Europe and the USA. This is currently being debated on both sides of the Atlantic, and will also have a central place on the agendas of the EU summit and NATO’s meeting of foreign ministers in December.

These are issues of great importance to European security, which will also have consequences for the future role of the OSCE.

The EU is in the process of strengthening its crisis management capability. This has a bearing on relations with the USA, and it affects relations with European NATO member countries that are not members of the EU. A common understanding regarding the issue of burden sharing and distribution of responsibility will be of great importance in determining what resources the organization will be able to rely on in a crisis.

Transatlantic agreement on these issues is needed if we are to build international consensus on a commitment to preventive diplomacy. Given the complexity of today’s peace operations, such agreement will be all the more important.

The need for coordinated international efforts has not decreased since the Kosovo conflict. It takes time to put together an efficient military force with contributions from several countries. Kosovo has also demonstrated that it often takes time to get started on the task of reconstructing civil society in the wake of a military operation.

Just as the KVM was unable to do the job that is now being done by KFOR, military troops cannot be used for institution building, democratization and economic development. These things must be left to other organizations, such as the UN, the OSCE and the EU.

There is a fragile mutual dependence between the civilian and military components of a modern peace operation. Transatlantic cooperation is has proved to be of decisive importance for its success.

Mutual support and cooperation between European and transatlantic organizations is one of the concepts underlying the negotiations in the OSCE on a security model or security pact for Europe in the 21st century. Work on this has been in progress for a long time, and the Norwegian chairmanship recently submitted a proposal for a text. The negotiations concerning this issue will continue up to the summit in Istanbul next month, which we hope will formally adopt the final text.

The primary purpose of this document will be to identify the responsibilities of the OSCE at the start of the new century and to establish a common security policy platform in Europe. Within this framework, organizations such as the UN, the OSCE, NATO, the WEU, the Council of Europe and not least subregional organizations will form part of an organizational network.

The objective is close and regular contact. But there will be no rigid cooperation structures that might stand in the way of necessary flexibility when efforts are to be made to prevent conflicts such as that in Kosovo.

We are now in the midst of extremely demanding negotiations. National interests are always heightened when important principles are to be put in writing. As leader of the negotiations, we must act impartially and seek to reach compromises, but the chairmanship will do everything in its power to complete the negotiations before the Istanbul summit.

The Kosovo conflict put the cooperation between NATO and Russia to the test. It was quite a challenge to arrange for active Russian participation in Kosovo, while keeping the coalition together and putting united and effective pressure on Belgrade. We succeeded in this. Russia’s participation, together with President Ahtisaari’s assistance as mediator, was extremely important in the final phase of the conflict.

One of NATO’s and the OSCE’s fundamental aims is to draw Russia into practical cooperation across the old dividing lines. These efforts met with difficulties even before Kosovo. We do not know how long it will take before we are able to put recent history behind us. However, I do not believe that Kosovo will, in the long term, stand in the way of the broad political and practical cooperation enjoyed by NATO, the OSCE and Russia today.

Closing remarks

We are now approaching the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Berlin was the focal point of the cold war for 30 years and the geographical centre of the OSCE’s area of responsibility.

Let us not forget that the Berlin Wall too could have been prevented.

These experiences from the past still challenge us today. They challenge us to renewed efforts to achieve long-term prevention of conflicts in the OSCE’s area of responsibility. They challenge us to achieve an institutional distribution of responsibility. They challenge us to achieve regional integration and coordination. They challenge us to continue to pursue transatlantic cooperation.

I can see no better way of celebrating this anniversary than by meeting these challenges.

Thank you for your attention.