Russia slams OSCE, calls for new EU security pact

HELSINKI (AFP) - Russia on Friday slammed the European security body OSCE for failing to prevent the war in Georgia, demanding an inquiry to determine why it did not act and insisting on the need for a new European security pact.
"It is clear that the OSCE has not met its main aim: to ensure safety for all," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Helsinki at a meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, attended by some 50 foreign ministers.
Lavrov said OSCE observers deployed in South Ossetia had warned their superiors of a Georgian attack in August but the information was not transmitted to all of the organisation's member states.
The organisation "did not react to the illegal use of force," he said. "It's totally unacceptable. I expect an inquiry to be carried out and the results to be presented to us," Lavrov said.
In an interview Thursday with AFP, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner admitted that OSCE observers had warned of a deterioration of the Georgian situation, and said the "early warning systems" had not functioned properly.
"It never works, because you always wake up too late, and afterwards someone always says that there were warnings that it would happen. Well, yes, but we didn't believe it," Kouchner said.
Lavrov's attack came after Russia had faced heavy western criticism on Thursday, the first day of the OSCE meeting.
The European Union and the United States condemned what they called the excessive use of military force by Moscow in Georgia in August and its decision to recognise the independence of the Georgian separatist regions South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
They also called on Russian troops to allow ceasefire observers to enter these territories.
Lavrov responded to the criticism by calling for a summit to be held on a new European security pact to establish "clear game rules" for the continent amid what Lavrov said was a crisis of confidence.
"There is a desire to find an agreement on clear game rules, to gradually restore confidence (in Europe), the crisis of which is the root of all problems," he said. Lavrov said the pact should "refute claims from some states who think they have an exclusive right to peacekeeping and security in the Euro-Atlantic zone," a veiled reference to the United States.
He added all European countries and international organisations should join the pact.
The US and a number of European countries have already said a summit on reorganising European security would be "premature."
"There is a general sense that there is a need for discussion of some of the problems in European security," US assistant secretary of state Daniel Fried told journalists on Friday.
"But there was strong sense in the room that the current institutions NATO, the EU, and the OSCE itself have worked well and there is hardly a need to replace them."
In November, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was in favour of such a summit in 2009, but Kouchner on Thursday backtracked from that statement.
The foreign ministers of several former Soviet states " Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan " on Friday published a statement supporting the Russian proposal.