Lavrov to participate in OSCE foreign ministers meeting

ALMA-ATA, July 17 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov will take part in a non-formal meeting of foreign ministers of the
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe /OSCE/ in Alma-Ata on
Saturday. Ministers from 56 member-countries will discuss the development
of the dialogue on security in Euro-Atlantic space and purposes of the
OSCE's possible summit.
The participants will exchange views on important problems of the
organisation's competence and beyond it, "including the situation in
Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan," a source in Russia's Foreign Ministry said.
They will discuss intermediate results of the dialogue in the framework of
the so-called Corfy Process, which was launched a year earlier on the
basis of open, wide and timely discussions. Moscow hopes that Russia's
initiative on a new European security agreement will be among the topics
discussed.
The sides in the meeting will outline issues to be included in the
agenda of the planned OSCE summit in Astana.
"We support Kazakhstan's initiative to organise the summit, which has
not been held since 1999," a source in Russia's foreign ministry said.
Foreign ministers have pre-planned bilateral and multilateral
meetings. Azerbaijan's and Armenia's foreign ministers are expected to
have negotiations together with their counterparts from the OSCE Minsk
Group /Russia, France, the USA/ and the acting OSCE chairman to discuss
the settlement of the Karabakh problem.
The event in Alma-Ata may present a meeting of seven regional
organisations dealing with security in the Euro-Atlantic region and in
Eurasia - the OSCE, EU, NATO, Council of Europe, CIS, CSTO and the
Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA).
This would be the first meeting of the kind, and "it may become a regular
event," the source said.
Russia supports consistently the idea to reform the OSCE.
"However, many members are not interested in any reforms and impede
the processes in this sphere," Lavrov said. "For about three or four years
now, the suggestions from Russia and its CIS and OSCE partners have been
with the OSCE."
"They involve a draft Charter of the Organisation, a project
regulating the OSCE field missions in hosting countries, a draft
regulating election observers' activities, a draft regulating relations
between the OSCE and non-governmental organisation," he said. "However, no
regulations have been implemented as yet."
The OSCE is the world major interregional and intergovernmental
organisation dealing with security issues. Presently, it unites 56
members, including all European countries, five Central Asian counties,
the USA, and Canada. The aim of the organisation is to provide a platform
for its members to discuss European matters, first of all - the security.
Earlier the organisation was called the Conference on Security and
Co-operation in Europe /CSCE/, until it got a new name, OSCE, back in 1995.