News

On 30 November, during the 15th meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Ministerial Council in Madrid, Lithuania’s Chairmanship of this organization in 2011 was approved. Lithuania is the first Baltic State to hold chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

“It is an opportunity for Lithuania to demonstrate its abilities to chair an important regional security organization. It is also an opportunity to apply the OSCE’s tools to tackle such important issues for Europe, like countering terrorism, regulating frozen conflicts, promoting democracy and regional cooperation in the Central Asia, as well as the continuity of election monitoring activity,” said Minister P.Vaitiekūnas, stressing the significance of this Chairmanship for Lithuania.

After intensive and tense negotiations, Foreign Ministers of the OSCE countries approved their decision regarding the chairmanship: it will be held by Greece in 2009 and in 2010 by Kazakhstan, and Lithuania is to chair the organization in 2011.

Already in 2004 Lithuania announced its candidacy for Chairmanship of the OSCE in 2010. After almost two years of complex and tense negotiations, all the OSCE Participating States came to an agreement regarding the OSCE Chairmanships for the 2009-2011 period.

In recent days, there have been intensive consultations held in Madrid with Ministers and Heads of delegations from the USA, the Spanish Chairmanship of the OSCE, Kazakhstan, and the European Union Portuguese Presidency. The OSCE Participating States approved of the idea that was raised by Lithuania during the negotiations to make a decision that would allow confirming future chairmanships for the successions of three years instead of choosing only one chairmanship.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Spanish OSCE Chairmanship Miguel Ángel Moratinos and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the EU Portuguese Presidency Luís Filipe Marques Amado welcomed Lithuania’s constructiveness and flexibility, due to which the internal OSCE crisis was successfully averted.

The OSCE is the largest regional security organization in the world with 56 States from Europe, North America and Asia. The OSCE missions operate in the Balkans, the Eastern Europe and Central Asian countries.

The organization directs main attention to the promotion of mutual trust among countries and nations, democratic reforms, the creation of modern institutions and the civic society, as well as the election monitoring. The issues of regional cooperation in the dimensions of military, politics, economy, environment protection and human rights are discussed during the annual meeting of the Ministerial Council. This year the key attention was devoted to the issues of frozen conflicts, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty) and election monitoring.