United States Mission to the OSCE

Response to Report of Ambassador Peter Burkhard, Head of the OSCE Office in Baku

Delivered by Deputy Representative Douglas Davidson
to the Permanent Council, Vienna

June 12, 2003

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm pleased to welcome Ambassador Burkhard once again to the Permanent Council, and I would like to thank him for his very informative report.

First of all, I would like to congratulate Amb. Burkhard and his staff, for their consistent and dedicated work over the past year. In particular, we can see this in their support, together with the staff and leadership of ODIHR, of electoral reform in Azerbaijan. The presidential election campaign season will open in less than two weeks, and the prospects for well-administered free and fair elections this coming October have improved significantly with the passage of the Unified Electoral Code and the provisions on electoral administration. That said, we continue to have concerns in a number of areas, including the role of election commissions at all levels and the debate over whether to allow domestic election observers in the presidential elections.

In the Politico-Military Dimension, we were similarly pleased to see how well the Office in Baku responded to the very short-notice request to provide lectures on international humanitarian law to Azerbaijan's international peacekeeping battalion. This type of training is important not only in the context of international cooperation, but also as a way to sensitize the Armed Forces as a whole to the importance of human rights and humanitarian issues.

In other areas of particular current interest, it is clear that the Office in Baku takes seriously the priorities that we set here in Vienna. The work that Ambassador Burkhard describes on combating terrorism and money laundering, anti-trafficking, and law enforcement training fits very well with the overall approach of both the OSCE and the United States government.

Within the Human dimension, Ambassador Burkhard has noted a number of activities of interest. Although all of these deserve attention, I'd like to express our particular support for the Office's efforts to strengthen and reform the judicial system and to improve protections for freedom of the media. Equally important is the Office's role in monitoring the government's treatment of civil society activists, both their physical safety and their freedom to operate. This will be particularly true as the election campaign progresses.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to voice our strong support for the Office's engagement in fostering the development of small and medium enterprises, both through its work on business incubators and through its involvement in implementation of the presidential decree on "Removing Impediments to the Development of Entrepreneurial Activity."

Thank you.