OSCE powers agree to revamp European security framework

CORFU: World powers in the the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe agreed Sunday to launch a comprehensive debate to revamp European security in the face of new challenges.

"We agreed on the need for an open, sustained, wide-ranging and inclusive dialogue on security," Greek Foreign Minister and OSCE chairwoman Dora Bakoyannis said at the close of the meeting on the Greek island of Corfu.

"(We) concurred that the OSCE is a natural forum to anchor this dialogue because it is the only regional organisation bringing together all states from Vancouver to Vladivostok on an equal basis," she said.

The organisation's permanent representatives in Vienna will hammer out proposals for a "more structured dialogue" at the OSCE's formal ministers' meeting in Athens in December, Bakoyannis said.

Foreign ministers from the OSCE's 56 member-states held the informal meeting under the shadow of a number of frozen conflicts in the region, chief among them the legacy of last year's Georgia war that poisoned relations with Russia.

With opposition from Russia, the mandate of 200 OSCE observers in Georgia was not renewed and the deadlock remained .

Monday,AFP