OSCE in general needs more attention as the only regional body in Europe in which both the U.S. and Russia can debate the issues along with Europeans and Eurasians (who are not in the EU) -- this is a welcome publicizing of the sort of internal conflicts that frequently occur there and get little scrutiny.

OSCE should be supported, and this dispute should not be allowed to disrupt funding from the U.S. for OSCE as a whole or any one project -- and there is a risk of this in today's hostile Congressional environment where Democrats have a hard time making the case for international work.

OSCE PA also needs more thoughtful and sustained criticism that looks at the good things this body has done over the years but also questions its judgement when it appears to be influenced by the decidedly undemocratic delegations in its midst, such as Russia's, which come from parliaments that result from elections that OSCE ODIHR has characterized as "flawed".

The whole issue of election monitoring needs more scrutiny and debate, for sure, as sometimes OSCE PA makes the right call and sometimes ODIHR doesn't and visa versa, and sometimes neither of them should be monitoring fake "elections" at all in some of the Central Asian countries, for example.

Walter Kemp was likely referring to the OSCE PA's over-praise of the Moldovan elections by OSCE PA, which led to a Communist landslide. But frankly these were spun by ODIHR current leadership as well. Democratic elections don't always produce democracy; the elections are far from democratic anyway in a good number of former Soviet republics that make up a vocal lobby for cutting funding for election monitoring at OSCE.

What this is really all about is Russia trying to refashion the entire security landscape of the Eurasian continent without human rights, and the West and new EU members from Eastern Europe disunited and weak in the face of Russian pressure, due to lack of political will and overriding energy security concerns and the war in Afghanistan.

I'm glad this story ended with the State Dept. keeping this contract in place, and Amb. Kelly going to bat for it as well and reassuring Spencer Oliver, but I do think there's a risk that non-democrats from the OSCE PA may now have to pack those workshops -- or the kind of "progressive" delegates of the West that tend to curry favour with the authoritarian governments in the East.

The OSCE is complicated, like all multilateral institutions, but the U.S. needs to pay attention, keep its chips in, and be at the table.

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/osce_unbound/2011/03/distracting-mens-minds-with-foreign-peace.html

If I have any of my facts wrong, I'd be happy to be set straight, as trying to follow what Spencer Oliver admits are the secretive doings of the OSCE can be very hard for citizen outsiders like myself.

Even so, it's not quite true that there is "no written record," as the U.S. delegation frequently makes interventions on human rights and security matters and posts this on the delegation's website or america.gov So at least we know what our own delegation is doing in Vienna, as do a few other countries, but yes, the OSCE needs to do much, much more to achieve the basic transparency that even the UN has now.

As for the horror about extrabudgetary contributions, well, again, without deep knowledge of the facts, I'd have to say that I often see a reason why the UN, OSCE, and other multilateral bodies develop these "voluntary funds" and "extra budget contributions," as regrettable as they are as an unaccountable practice, because frankly, certain countries bent on destroying the human rights programs or the frank reviews kill the funding and nickle-and-dime every program as Spencer Oliver well knows.

The reality of this situation is this: if you want to convene diplomats to have a critical assessment of Astana and the future of the security architecture, you really cannot do it within the structure of OSCE itself, especially with Kazakhstan, the last chair, still in the troika and with lots of vested interest in trying to spin the summit. And frankly, what may feel to some like a critical assessment of the summit by Kemp feels far too much of a diplomatic spin to me -- the summit in fact didn't have at all sufficient space for NGOs -- if you had 6,000 diplomats, how come you only had less than 200 NGOs from abroad at one managed conference with Kazakh diplomats having to speak at it? The Kazakh authorities blocked people like Turkmen exiles, and in general forced people to compromise -- and lent unfortunately legitimacy to this abusive regime. The leading human rights activist Evgeny Zhovtis, opportunistically jailed on the eve of Kazakhstan taking the chair, is still in jail.

While it's good to avoid conflicts of interest, it's not clear that the SG's presence on the IPI board is in fact pertinent to this particular program. The rule about conflict of interest is not necessarily about eliminating their appearances, but rather reporting their existence so that the public understands what it is at stake. The U.S. mission could have run the entire program itself, but it will have more buy-in and more diversity if the conference is handled by the IPI. If there were a long list of pointless and wasteful exercises coming out of the SG's office with such slush funds, I'd worry, but I don't see it.

While it should fall to a diplomat, not me, to defend the $83,400 budget (that could fund a small NGO for a year in many places), it's not such a huge figure that it should be the occasion for such scandal. In fact, all of this seems like nit-picking.

What this really seems to me to be about is the criticism of OSCE PA, and honestly, I don't think there should be such neuralgia about criticism of what is supposed to be an elected and more accountable body than OSCE itself.

You can hardly characterize as "an attack on parliamentarians" Kemp's mild paragraph about OSCE PA members who did indeed parachute into places like Moldova and did indeed make statements too overly positive about flawed elections.

While the State Department official referenced may be disingenuous, I also fail to understand why Kemp cannot criticize OSCE, or any body of OSCE like OSCE PA, while on the OSCE payroll or funded through the Kazakh chair. The writings of Kemp are amply visible online, and they are professional, knowledgeable and diplomatic in tone. Indeed, we all could have used a lot more criticism of the Kazakh chair, and those expected to criticize often gushed over Kazakhstan instead of condemning its practices, including at one hearing in the U.S. Congress where the love fest was disgraceful:

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/osce_unbound/2010/02/bearhunting-with-the-politburo.html

I certainly value the OSCE PA's open debates and MAJORITY VOTES. But again I raise the obvious problem with this august body: it has seated within it certain delegations that are the results of non-democratic elections -- meaning that vote can be tainted, and that good will can be canceled out by bad will. That's a problem, and we never seem to see those nettles being grasped. The OSCE PA has done some important things over the years, but has also been weak in others. For example, it has been the only body in the world to take on the very difficult task of making an international investigation of the violence in Kyrgyzstan in June 2010, although the report has been delayed.

Yes, the OSCE Permanent Council has vetos and secret consensus and we should work to change that, but the solution isn't to give more power to the OSCE PA, because the same bad actors wielding destructive vetos in the PC are the ones who've made the elections undemocratic, creating some of those very problem delegations in the OSCE PA. This ought to be obvious.

It seems to me that the problem of the undemocratic delegations in OSCE PA and its corrosive effects on OSCE PA as a whole and its mission keeps being dodged here. While the OSCE PA meets twice a year and passes dozens of important resolutions, the judgement calls on elections monitored do not seem to be put to a vote, but are are apparently judgements calls by the secretariat and various delegations who do the monitoring. In fact, some parliamentarians have rushed in to make politicized judgements on the scene of elections.

Furtheremore, the tendency is for the number of non-democratic members to grow, as there have been significant reversals in democracy all across the Eurasia region.

I'm well aware that the Charter requires that the parliamentary delegations be seated from each member state, regardless of their nature. Even so, one could work to change this over time, or even find creative ways to bring opposition delegations to speak in hearings. If the Russians want to re-fashion a new charter for Europe, then the West can push back, and say they won't take undemocratic delegations in OSCE PA -- among many other things. Yes, that sounds pretty infeasible, but the lack of legitimacy in some of the delegations that have very flawed election process or even the most rubber-stamp, state-controlled parliaments have to be addressed *somehow*.

I haven't claimed that the posting of an occasional statement by some delegations qualifies as "transparency" and I could only urge more. Yet if you look at the UN Security Council, the rough equivalent, you will find more openness, including even occasional sessions open to NGOs, but you will not find transcripts of meetings and only occasional presidential statements that are often heavily negotiated and compromised. I don't see that the PC members time would be well used in that sort of compromise exercise. NGOs have a lot of access to OSCE review meetings, speaking at the table as equals in the speakers' list.