Right of Reply to Russia on the Selection of Third Dimension Topics
As delivered by Chargé d’Affaires Courtney Austrian
to the Permanent Council, Vienna
March 18, 2021
Thank you, Madam Chair.
From the United States perspective, the CiO has utilized the Human Dimension Committee as the forum to propose topics and consult with OSCE participating State on the themes for third dimension events including the Human Dimension Seminar, Supplementary Human Dimension Meetings, and specially selected topics for HDIM.
You have been clear during the Human Committee meetings, that the Swedish Chair welcomes participating States’ feedback on the proposed topics.
We support the Chairpersonship’s reliance on the Human Dimension Committee for this purpose as it is an efficient and transparent way of ensuring all 57 participating States are consulted at the same time about proposed topics.
To date, the Russian delegation has not raised any substantive objections to the proposed topics during any of the Human Dimension Committee meetings. If the Russian delegation does have substantive objections to the Chair’s thematic proposals for this year’s third dimension events, then we urge them to raise them during PrepComm meetings next week to ensure that we are able to reach consensus on the remaining third dimension events this year in a timely fashion to facilitate productive discussions on the challenges facing our region.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
###
