Australia welcomes OSCE rebirth

AUSTRALIA: Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd

Thursday welcomed the rebirth of the key European security cooperation organization.

Attending the summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Astana, Kazakhstan, Rudd said OSCE had a continuing role to play in the many current security challenges in Europe and Central Asia.

He said OSCE had died away over the last decade and its return was a tribute to the summit hosted by Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Rudd said the summit had been a great success. “It’s brought together the countries of this wider region, reaffirming one core principle - the peaceful resolution of outstanding security problems in the wider region. That’s what’s been important,” he told local media in Kazakhstan, quoted by Australia Associated Press on Thursday.

OSCE was founded in the mid-1970s to ease Cold War tensions and also to further economic cooperation and human rights in the Communist bloc. Canberra,Thursday, Xinhua