Statement On the Programme Outline delivered by the Delegation of Armenia at the 999th Meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council

08 May, 2014

Statement On the Programme Outline delivered by the Delegation of Armenia at the 999th Meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council

May 08, 2014

Mr. Chairman,

We would like to thank Director of the DMF for presentation of the Programme Outline for the year 2015.

Regrettably the new budget cycle starts in absence of the Unified Budget for 2014, which may have its impact on the discussions of the Programme Outline.

We took note of the Programme Outline and would like to share some ideas and concerns on its provisions.

We are encouraged by the stated intention of the upcoming Serbian Chairmanship to strive to increase efforts to peacefully resolve existing conflicts in the OSCE area and prevent the outbreak of new crises. We expect that the Chairmanship will do that by supporting agreed formats as well as through the mandate of its personal representative.. The Office of the PRCiO is the only international permanent presence in Nagorno Karabakh which is engaged in promoting confidence building measures, including monitoring the Line of Contact between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan and the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border. The PRCiO Office should be strengthened both in terms of staff and financial resources and have proper operational capacities, corresponding to the evolving needs on the ground. In this regard we are disappointed to see reduction of the PRCiO budget.

We took note that in the Programme Outline the High Level Planning Group expresses its readiness to contribute to the Helsinki + 40 Process. In our view the Program Outline is not a board for seeking new job opportunities. We would like to clearly state that the HLPG is a specific body mandated to deal with a specific situation. It should remain strictly within the frames of its mandate without volunteering to do something that does not belong either to the Helsinki +40 process or its directive. Therefore any involvement of the HLPG in the Helsinki + 40 Process is unacceptable for my Delegation.

As for developing an additional peacekeeping option, we deem it as an inappropriate endeavour at this stage, having in mind the current state of affairs in the negotiation process on the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. With the same reasons, allocation of more than 260 thousand Euros to the HLPG is not supported by my Delegation. The HLPG budget should have zero nominal growth.

What regards the Minsk Process we would like to encourage the Minsk Group Co-Chairmen to continue close consultations with all the parties to the conflict in their efforts to build confidence and trust, promote reconciliation and prepare the peoples for a just and lasting peace.

As for the Project Coordinator in Baku, we took note with concern that its programme outline includes issues of refugees and IDPs. Since their inception the OSCE Offices in Yerevan and Baku have not been dealing with any conflict related issues given the existence of specific OSCE mandate in this regard. The intention of Baku Office to address issues of refugees and IDPs violates this understanding and therefore it should be withdrawn from the programme outline of the Project Coordinator.

On the other hand the focus of the Project Coordinator should be on the issues of democratization in Azerbaijan which is matter of number of discussions in the Permanent Council. We would like to see in the programme outline supporting the host country in addressing the recommendations of the OSCE institutions such as ODIHR and the RFoM.

In the end we would like to congratulate the upcoming Chair of the ACMF, Marina Milanovic-Ilic and offer our full support to her.

Thank You.

MFA RA
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