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Admission from OSCE on mission sent to Armenia: It is personal initiative of Acting Chairman

08 December 2022 14:11 (UTC +04:00)

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said that the group sent to Armenia on October 21-27 and initially called the "OSCE needs assessment team" has no connection with the organization, noted by the organization in response to the question of APA.

Noted that the decision on sending this group to Armenia was not made by the relevant OSCE decision-making bodies or the OSCE Secretariat, but by the personal initiative of the Acting Chairman.

The OSCE Secretariat noted that a decision was not made by the Permanent Council which is the OSCE decision-making body for sending this group, the group has not have the OSCE mandate, and also no amount was spent from the OSCE budget for themselves. It was brought to attention that the expenses of the delegation were paid individually by some OSCE participating states at the expense of extrabudgetary funds.

As it seems, the position of the Azerbaijani side in this matter, showing valid reasons, made the OSCE side to think again.

Besides, the OSCE side removed the announcement on sending the mentioned group from the official website (https://www.osce.org/chairmanship/529239). Undoubtedly, the work carried out by the Azerbaijani side during the last two months played a special role in achieving this result.

As it is known, on October 20, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan strongly reacted to the sending of this group, referring to the information published on the official website of the OSCE (https://mfa.gov.az/az/news/no49022).

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the issue of sending such a delegation was never discussed by any collective decision-making body of the OSCE, and as a result, no decision was made in this regard. It was emphasized that this delegation, sent without any OSCE mandate, could not be linked to the OSCE in any way, contrary to Armenia's claims.

This step raises serious questions given that during the past 30 years, the efforts to stop the military aggression against Azerbaijan and eliminate its severe consequences, and even efforts on the OSCE missions not related to the former Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, were always prevented by the OSCE, with reference to the principle of consensus.

Note that the acting chairman of the OSCE is in Poland.