Table of Reprimands

Yesterday the session of the nations’ ministerial council Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) opened in Vilnius. The meeting was designed to show the success of the attempt initiated at last year’s summit in Astana to breathe new life into this organization. However, from the results of the first day alone, it became obvious that reforming this organization will hardly be successful. In fact, Russia and its Western partners laid out a lot of serious claims against each other, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pounced on the Russian Federation with harsh criticism for the State Duma elections. As a result, as became known to Kommersant, Sergey Lavrov, head of the Russian delegation, refused to participate in today’s portion of the session. With details from Vilnius — Kommersant correspondent Elena Chernenko.

The day before the session in Vilnius, Kommersant sources in the Russian delegation said that they were going to Lithuania with “cautious optimism.” Russia’s ultimate goal was to achieve acceptance of the OSCE charter developed by the R.F. (The organization up to this point has no exact legal base.) In it, in particular, “rules of the game” would be secured for one of the OSCE tools that is most aggravating to Moscow — the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). According to the Kommersant source in the Russian delegation, ODIHR is devoting too much attention to monitoring elections and “only in countries to the east of Vienna.”

However, the majority of Western colleagues of the Russian diplomats believe that ODIHR is managing the work fairly well. “I want to assure you that we are devoting attention to the violation of human rights in the whole OSCE territory,” stated Yanez Lenarchich, head of ODIHR, to Kommersant. “In recent years, out of 56 countries, elections monitoring was conducted in 53. The only exceptions were Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican.”

Russia also had an immediate goal. Together with a number of ally countries, in Vilnius it presented a project concept to OSCE for the fight against the illegal drug trade, a resolution on OSCE’s role in the response to natural and man-made disasters and an updated version of one of OSCE’s foundational documents on the strengthening of trust and security. In addition, the R.F. wanted to give a reminder about the obligations to secure freedom of movement in the territory of the organization, obtained for its members back in the 1990s.

However, judging by yesterday, any agreement within the OSCE framework can be considered an achievement. The first session started with a pointed exchange. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dedicated her entire speech to human rights violations. She criticized Belarus for the arrest of human rights advocates and dissenters and Ukraine for the “politically motivated” persecution of the former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, but the majority of her speech was dedicated to the R.F. State Duma elections.

“And when authorities fail to prosecute those who attack people for exercising their rights or exposing abuses, they subvert justice and undermine the people’s confidence in their governments. And as we have seen in many places, and most recently in the Duma elections in Russia, elections that are neither free nor fair have the same effect,” announced Mrs. Clinton. “Russian voters deserve a full investigation of electoral fraud and manipulation.” [Note: These quotes can be found at http://photos.state.gov/libraries/osce/242783/misc_pdfs/S_Remarks_MCVilnius_12-6-11.pdf] The Secretary of State “emphatically” called on Russia’s leaders to act in accordance with the ODIHR recommendations. The same call was contained in the speech of the head of the European Community’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, and other European ministers.

When Sergey Lavrov took the floor, silence reigned in the hall. Everyone waited for how he would answer Hillary Clinton. The source in the Russian delegation later admitted to Kommersant that they knew in advance what the Secretary of State would say. However, Sergey Lavrov did not consider it necessary to respond to her attack directly, having laid out his list of claims. “Serious concerns are raised by the use of UN Security Council resolutions for unlawful goals and attempts to interfere in domestic conflicts in support of one of the sides, including with the use of force. The application of double standards is obvious. All of this could have very grave consequences,” stated Mr. Lavrov, clearly hinting at the NATO operation in Libya. This fell to Europe, including the host of the summit, Lithuania. “It is inexcusable to ignore the activity of extremist groups and neo-Nazis, not to mention the glorification of the Nazis and their supporters,” warned Mr. Lavrov.

The host of the summit did not directly respond to the Russian minister’s criticism yesterday. The head of the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Audronius Azubalis, stated only that “for resolution of the conflicts among nations, it is essential to acknowledge the truth about the past and the present.” What Lithuanians consider “truth” is the very point at issue of a two-sided relationship — journalists learned about occupation from the summit program. The term “occupation” with respect to actions of the USSR in its relationship with Lithuania was mentioned three times.

And it looks like the answer from the R.F. to the U.S. secretary of State’s attack is the following: As became known to Kommersant, Sergey Lavrov refused to participate in today’s portion of the session.