On 18/19 September 2009, the Graduate Institute (Geneva) organized its annual OSCE conference – this time, however, without Prof. Victor-Yves Ghebali, the longstanding spiritus rector of this and many other OSCE-related activities, who passed away at the beginning of the year. Thus, the conference’s first session was dedicated to a tribute to Victor-Yves Ghebali, the “Mr. OSCE” of political science. The participants of the conference reflected on the fact that the OSCE’s relevance has been growing recently: Along with the OSCE Secretary General, Marc Perrin de Brichambaut, and the High Commissioner on National Minorities, Knut Vollebaek, representatives of important states were also present. For the first time in years there was a panel on the CFE Treaty. Whereas Sergey Federyakov from the Russian Foreign Ministry presented Moscow’s well-known position, it could be felt in the statement of Jennifer Laurendeau from the U.S. State Department that the USA is working on a new position on CFE. In his role as commentator, the Head of CORE, Dr Wolfgang Zellner, requested that bilateral (USA, Russia) negotiations on CFE – currently only sporadic - be multilateralized and carried out in a continuous manner.

Contact: Dr Wolfgang Zellner