MOSCOW, October 12. /TASS/. The lack of base for work of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is the organizations system problem, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said following his meeting with the Organization’s Secretary General Lamberto Zannier on Monday.
"OSCE’s system problem is a lack of a legal base for many forms of its activities; and everything begins from the lack of the organization’s charter," the minister said. "No constituent document."
"The structure, which exists, undergoes challenges because it is weak and unstable."
The foreign minister said "it is called an organisation, but it is not one."
"The same is right about activities of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights," Lavrov said. "We have been calling to having a meeting, where we could sit and agree all the rules in the base of the bureau’s practical activities, first of all in the part referring to monitoring elections."
Right now, he continued, countries only have to invite monitors, including those representing OSCE, and there are no regulations saying "to Azerbaijan should go obligatory 260 monitors, and to Germany only two, and to a Baltic country, where several hundred thousand are non-citizens — no one should go whatsoever."
Meeting with OSCE chief confirms common interest in increasing number of monitors in Ukraine to 1,000
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday at a meeting with Lamberto Zannier the parties confirmed the interest in increasing the number of OSCE monitors in Ukraine to 1,000.
"We are positive about the work of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM), the Organization’s representative at the Contact Group on Ukraine as well as coordinators of the four working groups," Lavrov said. "Today, we have confirmed the bilateral interest in bringing the number of monitors to the allowed 1,000. As yet, they are about 550 people working there. Right now the mission faces yet another task to verify the withdrawal of light weapons of caliber up to 11mm."