Frozen conflicts high on OSCE summit agenda

Frozen post-Soviet conflicts, including the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Moldova's rebel region of Transnistria and Georgia's separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, are high on the OSCE summit agenda that opened in the Kazakh capital Astana on December 1. “Regional crises and transnational dangers threaten our people. Democracies are under pressure, and protracted conflicts remain dangerously unresolved,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, leading the U.S. delegation, said in an address to the summit, Reuters reported, quoted by Info-Prim Neo. According to Reuters, Hilary Clinton arrived at the summit despite U.S. doubts about the effectiveness of the OSCE, a sometimes uneasy mix of Western democracies and emerging economies of the former Soviet Union that often runs afoul of internal disagreements over issues such as human rights. Kazakhstan is hosting the OSCE's first summit in 11 years amid tight security in its showpiece capital. Talks are expected to focus on the revival of the role of Europe’s main security watchdog in tackling the growing problems of terrorism, drug trafficking and economic crises, Afghanistan and other long-running conflicts. Kazakhstan this year became the first former Soviet country to chair the 56-member OSCE. The summit was organized under the auspices of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. The Moldovan delegation is led by Deputy Prime Minister Victor Osipov. The summit in Astana is the seventh in the OSCE's history. The first was held in Helsinki in 1975.