OSCE Secretary General Commends Ukraine's Chairmanship

KYIV, Ukraine, June 12, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier expressed his satisfaction with the cooperation with Ukraine during its chairmanship in the organization. This was stated during Zannier's meeting with President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych and OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara.

"[I was] extremely pleased with the level of cooperation that existed between our organization's [OSCE] executive bodies and the chair country Ukraine. This was a real team effort, fulfilled with transparency, and I believe that this work was a success," said Zannier during his visit to Kyiv on June 10-11, 2013.

Among other achievements he outlined that Ukraine had managed to reinforce the importance of energy security issues, environmental protection, and the development of inter-state cooperation in the field of energy efficiency. Other issues, such as protracted conflicts, the way forward to Helsinki +40, energy security, arms control and Ukraine's priorities in the human dimension area were also discussed during the visit, reported osce.org.

At the opening ceremony of the high-level OSCE conference in Kyiv on June 10, Zannier spoke on strengthening the OSCE response to trafficking in human beings, reads osce.org. This issue is among the top priorities of the Ukrainian OSCE Chairmanship and is a possible topic for the OSCE Ministerial Council to take place in Kyiv in late 2013. The conference was organized through Ukraine's initiative as the Chair country at the OSCE.

Ukraine took over the one-year OSCE chairmanship in January 2013. As OSCE 2013 chair Ukraine aims to address both the long-standing and new challenges the organization members face (currently OSCE counts 57 member-states).

The country objectives include conflict prevention, solving longtime conflicts, post conflict restoration, overall regional safety and stability. Additionally, the country pays attention to energy safety issues, strengthening of the democratic institutions and reviving of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. The latter is considered the backbone of stability in the region since it puts the limits on the amount of weaponry allowed in Europe. These issues have been identified as Ukraine's goals by the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych in his speech at the 67th UN General Assembly in New York in September 2012.