The United States is in broad agreement with most of the comments already made by Finland/EU. We also appreciate the full accounting by Romania of the security situation in that country.

While the Code of Conduct deals specifically with Politico-Military aspects of security, it is clear that its impact is felt in all areas of OSCE activity.

We believe it is important to apply those principles to practical issues. This is demonstrated in our collective responses to the Code of Conduct questionnaire. We were able to provide further examples during the Second Follow-up Conference on the Code of Conduct held in Vienna 29-30 June.

We now have a number of suggestions resulting from that Conference. One which should be relatively easy to implement, and which the United States supports, is to agree to discuss a particular topic of the Code of Conduct questionnaire once a month in the FSC. Earlier this month, the FSC (Danish) Chairman tried to encourage discussion during the monthly Working Group A meeting on implementation issues on the first question of the Code of Conduct questionnaire, but delegations, my own included, were not yet ready to begin. We look forward to discussion on the Code questionnaire, and perhaps looking at other suggestions from the June Conference, in the FSC after Istanbul.

We attach importance to the commitments made in the Code of Conduct for military, paramilitary, and security forces to receive effective guidance from constitutionally established authorities vested with democratic legitimacy, for legislative approval of defense expenditures and for states to provide transparency and public access to information related to the armed forces.

These commitments make clear that there is no room for corruption or graft with regard to military procurement, or defense spending. Such corruption undermines legitimate national security, as well as overall democratic and civil society. This must not be tolerated.

We believe that this issue -- our collective commitment to oppose corruption -- is worthy of further focused attention in OSCE fora.

Mr. Chairman, I feel I must respond to the comments made concerning compliance with OSCE commitments during the Kosovo crisis.

Like the other states that participated in the military actions, the United States, of course, remains fully committed to all OSCE norms and provisions.

That is why the United States together with other nations took steps, including military measures, to deal with a crisis created by the persistent and blatant violation of OSCE standards by a government in Belgrade led by an indicted war criminal.

Every effort was made by the international community, in particular by the OSCE, to find a political solution to the conflict in Kosovo.

In direct defiance of the international community, Mr. Milosevic refused to comply with resolutions of the UN Security council; to observe the limits on the security forces agreed on 25 October 1998; to accept the political settlement negotiated at Rambouillet; or to end his excessive and disproportionate use of force in Kosovo.

Belgrade’s failure to meet these demands resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe involving the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of FRY citizens, murder, rape and the wanton destruction of property. These actions constituted an unacceptable threat to wider peace and security in Europe.

The objective of actions undertaken by the United States and others was to restore a respect for human rights, to stop the humanitarian catastrophe, and to prevent the spread of the conflict.

Thus, the action undertaken by the U.S. and other states, far from contravening the Code of Conduct, sought to uphold the requirement, expressed in paragraph 38 and elsewhere, to implement all commitments in the code in good faith.

Consistent with paragraph 17 of the Code, our countries sought to end the suffering Belgrade caused in Kosovo by its violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Kosovo Albanians.

Every effort was expended to persuade the Belgrade authorities to end their repression.

This included sustained diplomatic efforts, in particular by the OSCE, and a cooperative approach, as set out in paragraph 4 of the Code of Conduct, and an exhaustive attempt to find a political solution to the conflict, as required in paragraph 19.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.