OSCE chairmanship to focus on Balkans and Ukraine

OSCE chairmanship to focus on Balkans and Ukraine

According to Dacic, Serbia, as a candidate for EU membership, is sincerely committed to improving cooperation with its neighbours and countries of the region as a whole.

Serbia's chairmanship of the OSCE, which starts on January 1, 2015, will be very important because of the crisis in Ukraine that has posed as the chief issue during Switzerland's chairmanship, since 2014 was a year filled with challenges in the area covered by the OSCE, he noted, adding that the world faced one of the biggest crises since the end of the Cold War.

The OSCE reacted quickly to the crisis in extremely complex political circumstances and sent a special observation mission to Ukraine, which demonstrated the organisation's efficiency and stressed its global significance, he remarked.

"We understand that Ukraine will remain the dominant topic for the OSCE in 2015 and that the same level of involvement will be required. The main priority of our chairmanship in that context will be to stimulate a comprehensive peace process," he said, pointing out that the conclusions of the ministerial meeting in Basel had confirmed support to the OSCE's activities in Ukraine from the participant countries.

Next year will be the 40th anniversary of the adoption of the Helsinki Final Act and Serbia's chairmanship will pose an opportunity to emphasise the significance of that document once again, he stated.

"My intention is to discuss the continuation of the Helsinki plus 40 process with our partners inside the OSCE at the very start of the chairmanship," he said.

Serbia and Germany, as the future members of the OSCE Troika in 2015, supported the decision of the Swiss chairperson to form a panel of eminent figures, Dacic said, adding that he expects that the panel's work will be relevant to the Helsinki plus 40 process.

He underlined that Serbia pays great attention to the preparations for the presidency, which is proved by his visits to France, Russia and Ukraine where he went for consultations on how to ensure a better presidency in the interest of the whole organization, and general peace and stability in Europe.

"We will do everything to make Serbia's OSCE presidency constructive and to ensure that it yields constructive results", Dacic said.

He announced that the Ministerial Council will be held at Belgrade Arena on December 3 and 4, 2015, adding that it will bring together officials of 57 OSCE member states, ministers of foreign affairs and representatives of international organizations, as well as Mediterranean and Asian partners.

Dacic concluded that for now, at the end of the first half of the OSCE consecutive chairmanship of Switzerland and Serbia, we can say that this model proved to be efficient and enabled continuity and long-term planning of the chair's activities.

Swiss Ambassador to Serbia Jean-Daniel Ruch said that that OSCE has a central role in overcoming the crisis in Ukraine, from setting up the dialog framework to mediation in the plans to ease tensions.

Now we can say to those who have doubts about continuous relevance of the OSCE: Look at Ukraine, said Ruch, noting that challenges still exist, the conflict in Ukraine is not resolved, international law is still being violated, and this will mark the Serbian presidency.

He said that the Switzerland will remain engaged in achieving the OSCE objectives and that, together with Serbia and Germany, it will be a member of a strong and devoted troika of the organization.

The ceremonial reception, which Dacic organized in cooperation with the Swiss Embassy in Serbia, was attended by heads of the diplomatic missions and representatives of international organizations in Belgrade.