Minister Pusić: Ukrainian crisis highlights OSCE importance

First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Vesna Pusić is attending 4-5 December in Basel a meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council

First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Vesna Pusić is attending 4-5 December in Basel a meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council.

Pusić thanked Switzerland for the excellently organized presidency, adding that Serbia, which will be presiding over the OSCE in 2015, had a very good example of how an organization which had started to appear languid was brought back to the forefront and assumed an important role. “Switzerland did not expect that it would be faced with such dramatic events as the Ukrainian crisis,” adding that it had set high standards in terms of presidency. “Given that the OSCE is one of the few forums where Russia, the West, the EU and Central Asia are all sitting at the same table, it is important to maintain the same presidency standards,” Pusić said, stressing that Serbia, if it managed to maintain those standards as well as the approach to the problem that has arisen during the Swiss presidency and which was still on the plate, had a chance to affirms itself and the region. In that, apart from the OSCE troika (the past, current and future presiding country), it should get assistance from a widely-supported proposal to form a sort of a “wise men council”, i.e. a group of people that would help the OSCE position itself in the demanding role that the deterioration in the Russia-West relations has imposed upon it, Pusić said.

Together with her counterparts from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia, Pusić signed Amendments to the Agreement on Sub-Regional Arms Control (Dayton Article IV, Annex 1-B), which is part of the 1994 Dayton Agreement.

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