Foreign Minister Urmas Paet gave a speech on the future of security in Europe during the meeting of the foreign ministers of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) held in Almaty, Kazakhstan today.
Paet said that there is no security without respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. “We must pay close attention to the protection of human rights and freedom of the media,” he noted.
Paet stated that the OSCE must also focus on resolving protracted conflicts. “In order to deliver some real progress, we must address issues related to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Transnistria, and the Nagorno-Karabakh,” the Estonian foreign minister noted.
Paet also spoke about the importance of preventing new conflicts from arising. “We must address the situation in Kyrgyzstan in order to minimise the potential for new conflicts to emerge and to prevent the spreading of the conflict to other Central Asian nations,” Paet emphasised. He stated that at the moment the most important activities are ensuring the safety of the people, creating opportunities for refugees to return home, and increasing the contribution of the OSCE so that the ethnic violence would not recur.
Paet stressed that we must also continue to address new security concerns within the framework of the OSCE, such as climate change, energy and cyber security, and terrorism. “It is also necessary for the OSCE to have deeper engagement in Afghanistan so that we can continue contributing to the improvement of the security situation,” he added.
