Intervention by ambassador Tauno Pesola, Chair of CBSS/CSO: OSCE Meeting on Preventing and Combating Terrorism in Vienna, 6 September 2002

Mr. Tauno Pesola,
Ambassador,
Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland

at the OSCE Meeting of Subregional Organizations and Initiatives on Preventing and Combating Terrorism in Vienna, 6 September 2002


Ladies and gentlemen,

The CBSS Presidency welcomes the initiative of the OSCE to call together today’s meeting. With a great variety of organisations covering co-operation in different spheres in the OSCE area, there is obviously a danger for overlap and duplication of efforts. Perhaps today’s meeting will be a first step toward identifying those areas where unnecessary duplication can be avoided and where “value added” is attainable by fostering co-operation among and between subregional organisations and the OSCE.

The CBSS is by now one of the oldest and most established subregional organisations in Europe, having been founded just over a decade ago by the foreign ministers of the countries of the Baltic Sea region. Notably, especially in the context of our topic today, the founders of the CBSS deliberately left out issues of “hard security” or military questions from the regional cooperation agenda. On the other hand, issues of “soft security” have occupied a prominent place on the CBSS agenda, including issues such as nuclear and radiation safety and civil security, emergency preparedness and the fight against organized crime. Since 1996, the biennial summits of the heads of government of the Baltic Sea region have regularly focused their attention on issues of “soft security” and have taken the initiative to set up a special high-level task force on co-ordinating the fight against organized crime. Mr. Boolsen is here today from the task force Secretariat to go into greater detail on the work of the task force, especially as regards the fight against terrorism.

In 1994, two years after the founding of the CBSS, the ministers of foreign affairs decided to create the institution of a Commissioner for Democratic Development who would be responsible for monitoring the situation in member-states with regard to the protection of human and civil rights, including the rights of minorities. The Commissioner’s mandate has focused on supporting the building and strengthening of democratic institutions, such as the Ombudsman, and has been instrumental in drawing attention to transnational issues threatening these same rights and institutions, e.g. the growing problem of trafficking in human beings. Today we are joined by Ms Helle Degn, who will speak on the human rights aspects of the fight against terrorism.

This last point is a crucial one because one of the best ways to help prevent the spread of terrorism is to immunize our societies from the conditions which breed frustrations, bitterness, fear and hatred among and between peoples and nations. The CBSS, from its inception, has been a tool used to build trust and understanding between countries with very different recent political histories and levels of economic development. The cold-war division of Europe ran right through the middle of the Baltic Sea for almost half a century. We have witnessed a remarkable transformation of the region, thanks partly to the efforts of the CBSS to act as a subregional motor for accelerating the process of European integration.

During the coming year, the Finnish presidency of the CBSS is ready to work closely with you to exchange experiences and compare “best practices” and develop co-operation in relevant fields. Preventing and combating the spread of terrorism in Europe and the world is no doubt one of the most relevant fields. I wish us all success in this endeavour.