The crisis of trust between OSCE member states is getting deeper, Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference following talks with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde on Friday.
"Since the moment of our meeting in February when Madam Minister was here on a first visit as the leader of the OSCE, the situation in the organization’s space has not improved, problems haven’t decreased. We admit that the state of affairs is characterized by the deepening, to be honest, [crisis] between the member states and the predomination of confrontational logic over constructive dialogue and cooperation for the sake of which, actually, the OSCE was created," he said.
The Russian top diplomat noted that during talks the Russian side stressed that the attempts to use the OSCE for meddling in internal affairs is "a very dangerous path." "These attempts should be intercepted," he stressed.
The Russian foreign minister also pointed to certain flaws in the current operations of the organization. "Due to a wide geographic scope, the all-encompassing scope, the rules of consensus, the organization is capable of indeed playing an important part in the search for collective answers to shared challenges and threats. In order to tap this very important unifying potential, the OSCE should increase the effectiveness of its institutes, its field presence, adjust certain disproportions in its activities, both geographic and thematic ones," he explained.
According to the Russian top diplomat, the talks facilitated an exchange of opinions on how to increase the effectiveness of the organization. He also reiterated that Russia with its allies has been promoting an entire package of proposals on the OSCE reform for a while "so that it fully justifies its intergovernmental nature."
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