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Written Evidence Submitted by Philip Remler (MUO0007) I Can Only Written evidence submitted by Philip Remler (MUO0007) SCOPE I can only provide information with regard to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and only with regard to the times I was seconded to OSCE field operations or otherwise interacted as part of the OSCE. These have been three: April 1995-August 1995 Political officer seconded to the first cohort of the OSCE Assistant Group in Chechnya during a period of active armed hostilities, seeking a peaceful resolution to the Chechnya conflict in the Russian Federation and dealing with humanitarian and human rights issues. 1996-1998 Deputy in the U.S. Department of State office of the special negotiator for conflict resolution in the Newly Independent States (of the former Soviet Union), working as part of the OSCE Minsk Group and, from 1997, as part of the U.S. co-chair as the Minsk Group attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Karabakh conflict. I had previously participated in Minsk Group negotiations in Geneva in 1993, based on my position then as political officer in the U.S. Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan. December 2007-January 2012 Head of Mission seconded to the OSCE Mission in Moldova, dealing with all issues, including efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Transdniestria conflict. As is evident, the experience is largely in conflict resolution, and exclusively in field operations and the sui generis Minsk Group. I have no special expertise with regard to institutions such as the OSCE Secretariat, Permanent Council, the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the OSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, or other affiliated institutions, though I interacted with them frequently. I will limit myself therefore to the three periods outlined above. VALUE OF OSCE FIELD OPERATIONS The value-added of OSCE field operations is the combination of both neutrality and expertise. Only the UN possesses both these qualities, but unlike the UN Development Program, which oversees the UN’s principal field operations, the OSCE is a political organization. With the emergence of new states from the fragments of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, a host of inexperienced actors appeared on the international scene. What became the OSCE Permanent Council was one of very few places where delegations of these new states interacted as equals with older, often more powerful states. The new states therefore welcomed the field presences of the OSCE as a way of helping them navigate the international arena – especially as they were beset by severe problems such as civil war and ethnic separatism. The OSCE field presences represented all the participating States and did not take geopolitical sides. Some of the new states had already chosen – or were in the process of choosing – geopolitical sides; they were still willing to work with the OSCE as well as with the nations they wished to befriend. Some were trying to avoid taking sides; these states found it easier to work with the OSCE than with large states whose agenda they distrusted. On that basis the OSCE field operations were on the ground early, worked closely with host governments and over time developed great expertise on a wide range of issues. In some cases the OSCE presence was the international community’s only presence on the ground. One such case was the OSCE Assistance Group in Chechnya, deployed to Grozny in April 1995, the only permanent international presence during a time of intense military hostilities. “The Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office on the conflict dealt with by the OSCE Minsk Conference” has had a field presence in the Karabakh conflict’s war zone since 1996 and is the one political representative of the international community to maintain constant contact with the Stepanakert authorities. Unlike national embassies, whose diplomats are usually generalists, the OSCE field operations often attract area experts from academia and civil society, long acquainted with the host countries, to work as officials. They often serve in those presences for long periods – as long as OSCE rules allow – making their expertise in the country unmatched. One can point to the current OSCE Head of Mission in Chişinău, Moldova: Claus Neukirch wrote a doctoral dissertation on the Transdniestrian conflict, the primary issue of the Mission in Moldova. He served in the Mission in various capacities, including as Deputy HoM when I was there, speaks fluent Romanian and Russian, and is deeply embedded in Moldovan society. He was one of several equally specialized experts at the Mission in that period. Owing to the secondment of such accomplished figures, the level of expertise at the OSCE Mission in Moldova has matched or exceeded that of much larger diplomatic missions, including the U.S. and Russian embassies and the EU delegation. This is a pattern which has repeated itself throughout the OSCE region. The combination of assets – neutrality and expertise – have allowed OSCE field operations to be effective over the long term in a number of valuable areas: in mediation that helps to produce ceasefires (as in Chechnya) and to prevent conflicts from flaring up into active hostilities; in post-conflict state-building and establishment of the rule of law; and in monitoring and promoting better observance of human rights, including minority and gender rights. Over decades, OSCE field operations have had successes in all these fields in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. I can speak in detail only of the operations in which I served, when I served in them. The OSCE Assistance Group in Chechnya was deployed to Groznyy on 25 April 1995, in the midst of active armed conflict. Mission members crossed between the lines regularly – rarely in armored vehicles and never with enough personal protection – to help the sides conduct negotiations. They regularly experienced firefights and artillery barrages. Eventually, the OSCE house in Grozny became the site of ceasefire negotiations. Assistance Group members were dispatched to ensure the safety of Chechen officials, including Aslan Maskhadov, as they crossed active front lines to attend negotiations. At the end of July 1995, at the OSCE mission, the first ceasefire was reached between the two sides. Apart from the negotiations, Group members also engaged in humanitarian and human rights efforts. The OSCE Minsk Group has been conducting negotiations to resolve the Karabakh conflict since 1992. The Minsk Group Co-Chairs did not mediate the ceasefire that has held (with many violations) until today; that was a unilateral Russian effort. However, beginning thereafter the Minsk Group Co-Chairs drafted a peace plan that they presented to the sides in 1997. It was accepted, with some details still to be worked out, by the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, President Ter-Petrosyan of Armenia could not bring his country along with him, and he was forced to resign in January 1998. The Minsk Group has continued its efforts to this day.1 The OSCE Mission in Moldova was established in 1993 to seek a negotiated peace in the Transdniestria conflict. For many years the sides talked inconclusively, but there has been no resumption of armed hostilities. Unlike in other conflicts life has returned to a sort of normal, with constant road traffic between the two banks of the Dniestr for trade, family visits, and transit. In 2005 the negotiating format was widened and given the format it retains today: the “five plus two.”2 The OSCE is an official mediator and organizes most of the negotiations. However, shortly after the five plus two was formed, the talks were broken off by both sides. The OSCE Mission worked for years to bring the sides back together, organizing conference after conference and reviving sectoral working groups of the sides that had been abandoned since 2001. Finally, the leaders of the two sides attended a conference in Bad Reichenhall, Germany, in 2011 and agreed to resume official negotiations, which began that year. The Mission maintained its absolute neutrality, not only between the two sides, but also among the mediators and observers; and gave the sides packages to negotiate over. Clearly, peace efforts suffered a blow when two of the mediators, Russia and Ukraine, went to war with one another in 2014. It has been up to the OSCE to revive negotiating efforts, mostly on a package of confidence- and security-building measures. Aside from the negotiations, the Mission also made impressive progress in fields including securing the destruction of banned weapons such as cluster bombs, combatting the rampant human trafficking, and implementing rule-of-law initiatives, among others. To be sure, the OSCE operations face serious limitations. Field operations are generally small, and have never been deployed before conflicts break out; it would be unrealistic to expect a handful of OSCE observers to be able to prevent states and their proxies intent on opening hostilities from doing so, as we saw in the conflicts in Georgia in 2008 and Azerbaijan in 2016. 1 I have described these efforts in detail in: https://www.ipinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/1605-Chained-to- the-Caucasus.pdf 2 The “Five” include the parties (Moldova and Transdniestrian authorities) and the mediators (OSCE, Russia, and Ukraine). The “two” are the observers (U.S. and EU). And, of course, all the mediation capabilities in the world by themselves are not sufficient to induce warring parties to come to a peaceful resolution, if they are unwilling or unable to make the necessary compromises. In addition, ultimate OSCE decision-making is by unanimous consensus. Any participating State can use its liberum veto to block any action (including renewing the mandate of a field operation) if it so desires.
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