Thank you. Mr. Chairman. I would like to welcome you,
Ambassador Ekeus, to the Permanent Council and to thank
you for your detailed report on your activities.
Indeed, the work of the High Commissioner on National
Minorities is an important part of the OSCE, helping to
further the rights of minorities, counter intolerance
and discrimination, and provide early warning of and
appropriate responses to violence, intolerance,
extremism and discrimination.
In this regard, the High Commissioner on National
Minorities plays a valuable role in mitigating the
conditions that terrorist organizations are able to
exploit to recruit and win support. To this end, we look
forward to reading your "Road Map" on implementation of
action items for the High Commissioner in the Bucharest
Terrorism Plan of Action.
The Permanent Council in the next few months will
also be discussing ways in which we can implement our
Bucharest Ministerial commitments to counter intolerance
and discrimination on the grounds of racial or ethnic
origin, religious, political or other opinion. We
encourage the HCNM to participate in the discussion for
the way forward. In this regard, the U.S. delegation
would like to suggest that a Supplementary Human
Dimension Meeting be held on the role of community
policing in building confidence between minorities and
the government and majority ethnic group.
The U.S. delegation also welcomes the High
Commissioner's anticipated involvement—working with the
OSCE Mission in Skopje, and in support of the Council of
Europe—in the preparation and conduct of the census
later this year in the Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia. Accurate census taking can be an important
step in building confidence, among minority communities
and majority communities alike, in the policies that are
based on the data collected.
We also recall and support the High Commissioner's
recommendation, in his 2000 report on Roma in the OSCE
area, that an OSCE seminar be held on the issue of
ethnic data collection by governments. The U.S.
delegation would therefore like to reiterate our
proposal that the OSCE convene one of this year's
Supplementary Human Dimension Meetings on the
challenges and methods of conducting censuses.
Finally, we encourage the High Commissioner to
continue his work with field missions to work with local
governments and other national and local officials on
minority rights, tolerance, and multicultural
communication. It is ultimately the responsibility of
OSCE participating States to implement our own
commitments, but your assistance in this matter is
invaluable. We are therefore, encouraged by Estonia and
Latvia's welcoming of continued work with the High
Commissioner on Minority Issues in their countries in
the follow-up to the firm ground-work that was laid by
the Missions there. Again, we look forward to working
with you in the next year. Thank
you.
