OSCE GOES POLITICAL?

On July 9, Gazeta.ru reported that, three days previously, the eleventh annual session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had opened in Berlin. “The OSCE parliamentarians’ attack on the [Russian] antiterror campaign,” the website wrote, “proved to be so fierce that it vexed members of the Russian delegation.” The head of the Russian delegation, Gennady Seleznev, speaker of the State Duma, speculated in an interview with ITAR-Tass that “the OSCE is changing from a structure born out of the Helsinki [process] into a political animal.” “In effect,” Seleznev declared, “there is a rivalry for precedence between the OSCE and PACE…. Unfortunately, the focus is moving toward human rights.”