Russian Foreign Minister Highlights Importance Of Upcoming Bucharest Meeting Of OSCE Council Of Foreign Ministers

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov stresses the importance of the meeting of the OSCE Council of Foreign Ministers slated to be held in Bucharest on Monday. A RIA Novosti correspondent reports that upon his arrival in the capital of Romania the Minister told journalists that this meeting must become "a notable event of European politics". "A new serious measurement of security" must appear in the OSCE, Ivanov emphasized. "We hope that we will succeed in adopting a meaningful document on the role of the OSCE in this sphere", he said. According to the Russian Foreign Minister, "a serious talk about the current tendencies in the sphere of European security is to be held at the Council meeting." "Collective search for adequate answers to the new threats and challenges which Europe is facing, first of all joint efforts in the struggle against international terrorism, is necessary today more than ever before," Ivanov stressed. Furthermore, a debate on the place of the OSCE in the European architecture of security, as well as on guidelines of its structural reform is expected to take place, the Minister noted. Igor Ivanov said that on the threshold of the Council meeting the delegations of all the 55 OSCE member countries "worked a lot to boost the organisation's possibilities to broaden the political dialogue and to improve the methods of its activity." "If documents to this effect are adopted, a move of no small importance will be made to deeply reform the OSCE and to bring back to it the initial role of a European forum for discussing and adopting decisions on topical problems of European security," the Minister believes. Ivanov holds the view that, moreover, it depends on the results of the Bucharest meeting whether the OSCE will manage to fit in with the new dynamism of international relations, with a qualitatively higher degree of cooperation and mutual understanding which have been shaping up after the September 11th tragic events. The Russian delegation has arrived "with an intent to work so that the Council meeting would be held in a constructive atmosphere potent of weighty results," Ivanov added. "Our purpose is to finally overcome the crisis of the OSCE and to safeguard its befitting place in the system of multilateral institutions operating in Euro-Atlantic space. Any other options can only aggravate the problems which the OSCE has encountered in the past few years, and in the long run will adversely affect the whole situation in Europe," the Minister believes. "If our partners, for their part, proceed from this presumption, we will certainly accomplish the tasks facing us," Ivanov concluded.