11 December 2009                                                                                                                      Vienna, Austria

General introductory remarks

I would like to congratulate the chair and OSCE membership for the successful organization and conclusion of the Ministerial conference in Athens, and Mr. Kotsonis and Roussos for their briefing and helpful remarks. We agree that in 2009 OSCE participating states and their Asian and Mediterranean partners for cooperation have impressively promoted cooperation in the areas of mutual interests and benefit. My delegation had the chance to give its positive appraisal of the cooperation during the Ministerial meeting almost a week ago. Therefore I shall not repeat them here. Like other delegations, we are looking forward to working with the new chair – Kazakhstan and the new troika. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Finland, Ambassador Turunnen and his colleagues for their active cooperation in the past three years, and what we have achieve today is thanks to a great contribution of Finland. Thank you.

Taking this opportunity Mongolia would like to welcome Australia as a new Partner. With its vast experience and proactive foreign policy Australia can make an important contribution to our joint work. Australia’s partnership status underlines that OSCE is pursuing the policy of inclusion, and not exclusion.

Partnership fund

Turning to the issue of the Partnership fund, I would like to thank the Secretary General and his staff from the Section for External Cooperation for preparing the report on the operation of the Partnership fund. We believe that the four new projects developed under the Fund’s umbrella in 2009 and the two that were started in 2008 all have been very useful, as attested by the comments of their participants.

Mongolia, which aspires to become a middle-income country in the near future, has been one of the beneficiaries of project No. 1100705 since the fund supported participation of Mongolian representatives to some international events listed in PC.DEC/812. Thus with the support of the fund, and Finland in particular, one expert from Mongolia was able to participate in ODIHR’s expert meeting and one representative in the OSCE-Japan Conference. The response to the conference held in Mongolia on the relevance of the experience of the Helsinki process have been very positive and in fact there were ideas to follow-up by focusing separately on each one of the three baskets.

As mentioned in the report, in 2010 Mongolia would be hosting an international expert workshop on combating modern slavery in the form of human trafficking. This is an issue that concerns many countries, including participating states of OSCE and its partners for cooperation. We are looking forward to a very useful and productive workshop that would benefit all. We hope that both participating states and partners will take an active part in it. As it is the practice, my delegation will report back on its outcome.

Mongolia is not a donor country. It is stringing to reach the level of medium income country by 2021. However, in its cooperation with OSCE members and its partners, Mongolia tried to contribute ideas and share its experience. Thus Mongolia has expressed its readiness to host the 2011 OSCE-Asian partners conference the overarching theme and sub-themes of which would be discussed and agreed upon with OSCE and its Asian partners. Mongolia also expressed its readiness to share its experience in promoting more openness and more accountability of the government, and promoting good governance. In 2006 Mongolia produced democratic good governance indicators (DGIs) that were widely welcomed by the new and emerging democracies. In our view nationally produced and owned, these indicators could serve as a good tool for involving the civil society and assessing progress in the country’s democratic governance reforms.

Importance of the OSCE Partnership in the dialogue on European security

My delegation would like to thank Amb. Marinaki , Chairperson of the Permanent Council for introducing the outcome and how to further the Corfu Process. My delegation would like to congratulate Greece for launching this wide-ranging and open Vienna-based dialogue on issues of European Security and for having been able to have the Athens Ministerial meeting adopt a declaration on the OSCE Corfu Process as well as a separate decision (No.1/09) on how to further the process.

Mongolia welcomes the decision of the Ministerial meeting to invite OSCE Partners for Cooperation as well as some international organizations and representatives of the academia and NGO communities to contribute to the discussions on an ad hoc basis. Most of the eight thematic areas of focus identified in the decision also affect the security interests of adjacent areas and of many Partners for Cooperation. Thus Mongolia is interested in following the discussions, especially the issues affecting its neighbors or the Eurasian region in general. Therefore Mongolia will take an active part in the December 17th informal meeting to discuss some concrete issues of security. It will also follow with great interest the joint reinforced meeting of the Permanent Council and the Forum for Security Cooperation and the interim report summarizing proposals put forward by the participating states within the Corfu Process.

Thank you for your attention.

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