30 November 2009                                                                                                                      Athens, Greece

Madam Chair,
Deputy Minister Kouvalis,
Distinguished delegates,

Allow me to begin by joining the previous speakers in expressing our appreciation to OSCE Ministerial Troika, Amb.Kotsonis and the Secretary General Marc Perrin de Brichambaut for their efficient guidance and competence in successfully leading the work with Asian Partners throughout the year. Allow me also to express my delegation’s appreciation to the Hellenic Government for inviting Asian Partners to this biggest event organized by Greece since the 2004 Olympics.

At the outset, I would like to express sincere gratitude to the Finnish Chair of Asian Partners for its continued efforts and dedication to promote our cooperation in 2009. I am sure that under both the Finnish and Greece Chairs, further foundations were laid to promote our partnership within OSCE’s three dimensional activities.

Since last year, many important events have taken place in pursuit of peace, understanding and cooperation. One of such events is the Corfu ministerial informal meeting which has launched "the Corfu Process" to enable OSCE states to address and possibly craft more effective common responses to the security challenges. We express the hope that a joint declaration and decision on the continuation of the Corfu Process will be the outcome of this Athens Ministerial meeting.

As seen from the activities of OSCE with its Asian and Mediterranean partners, many important measures have been undertaken throughout the year that contribute to further understanding among the participating states or even bring these states closer together on specific issues of common interest.

Mongolia tried to play its part. Thus in April it hosted an international conference entitled “Present and Future Security Environment in North-East and Central Asia: Ulaanbaatar-New Helsinki?”. The participants accepted that there is a need to promote further confidence-building, especially in North-East Asia where the DPRK’s nuclear-weapon program is raising tension and concern not only of the states of the region, but internationally. Participants agreed to the usefulness of the conference and proposed to hold a follow-up meeting to address in-depth one specific issue of mutual concern or interest, perhaps regarding the future international status of Afghanistan, for example. We believe that it would be useful to organize such a meeting by the next Chairman of OSCE, together with CICA. Mongolia would be ready to participate in such a meeting.

In Tokyo in June OSCE-Japan Conference was successfully organized. At this conference, Mongolia emphasized the importance of efforts to establish an Asia-Pacific regional security structure and greater military transparency.

Madam Chair

Looking to the future, on 9 and 10 February 2010, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, together with OSCE, will be organizing in Ulaanbaatar a workshop entitled “Combating Modern Slavery: National, Regional, International experiences”, which was agreed to by the Permanent Council. The workshop’s objective is to promote deeper understanding of the existing problems, encourage exchange of information and views, sharing the best practices in preventing and/or combating this form of slavery at the national, regional and international levels.

We believe that numerous experts from the participating states and the Asian Partners, including NGOs, academic institutions, and other international organizations would be attending and sharing their views and experience.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Government of Thailand for graciously agreeing to our request to host the Asian Partners conference in 2011 since that year we will be marking 100th anniversary of regaining our independence. The concrete date and topics of the conference will be discussed with OSCE members and our Asian Partners in early 2010.

I would like to reaffirm Mongolia’s willingness to cooperate closely with OSCE, its participating states, as well as with all of our Asian and Mediterranean Partners for Cooperation.

Last but not least, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Finland and other contributors to the Partnership Fund for supporting some of our participation on the jointly agreed programs of 2009.

Thank you.

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