Mission dispatched to Armenia nothing in common with Pan-European organization - OSCE
By Fatima Hasanova
Two months after the "OSCE Needs Assessment Mission" was dispatched to Armenia on October 21-27, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) made it public that it is not affiliated with the organization, Azernews reports.
On December 9, according to the organization, the decision to send this group to Armenia was not made by the relevant decision-making bodies or the OSCE secretariat, but by a personal initiative of the Chairman-in-Office.
"The mission has nothing to do with the organization," OSCE said.
The OSCE Secretariat emphasized that the Permanent Council, the OSCE decision-making body, did not decide to send this team, that the team does not have an organizational mandate, and that no budgetary funds were spent on it. It was noted that the costs were borne by individual OSCE participating states using extrabudgetary funds.
Thus, the position of the Azerbaijani side with weighty arguments made the OSCE consider this issue.
It should be noted that the OSCE has also removed the announcement of the sending of this group from the official website. There is no doubt that the work of the Azerbaijani side over the past two months has played a special role in achieving this result.
As is known, on October 20, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, referring to information published on the official website of the OSCE, reacted harshly to the sending of this group.
The Foreign Ministry noted that the issue of sending this group was not discussed by any collective body of the OSCE and no decision was made. It was emphasized that this group, sent without any OSCE mandate, contrary to the statements of Armenia, cannot be associated with the OSCE. In addition, the ministry said that the move raises serious questions, given that missions in connection with efforts to stop military aggression against Azerbaijan for almost 30 years, as well as on issues unrelated to the former Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, usually, were prevented by the OSCE with reference to consensus.
The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries of Russia, the USA, and France had mediated a peaceful solution to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the signing of the volatile cease-fire agreement in 1994. The Minsk Group’s efforts resulted in no progress as Armenia refused to abide by the UN Security Council Resolutions (822, 853, 874, and 884) demanding the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of its troops from Azerbaijani territories, which was the main obstacle to the resolution of the conflict.
The trilateral ceasefire deal, signed by the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders on November 10, 2020, ended the three-decade-long conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which along with the seven adjacent regions came under the occupation of the Armenian armed forces in the war at the outset of 1990s.
Poland is the OSCE Chairman-in-Office.
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