Helsinki - The future security structure of Europe will also include the 56-nation Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb predicted Thursday in Helsinki. Stubb briefed reporters after a three-hour luncheon with some 50 foreign ministers attending the 16th ministerial conference of the OSCE in the Finnish capital.
The session offered ministers an opportunity to sound out, among others, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on proposals for a new European security structure floated by Russia and France, Stubb said.
"It is very early stages. We don't have anything concrete on the table," Stubb said, adding no possible summit date was discussed.
Before and after the luncheon, several ministers touched on the war between Russia and Georgia in August in their speeches.
Georgia's Foreign Minister Ekaterine Tkeshelashvili - without mentioning Russia by name - said that "invading forces had not withdrawn" after the ceasefire brokered by the European Union and the OSCE.
But Tkeshelashvili stressed there was need for an extension of the OSCE mission in Georgia, with observers having "full access" to all areas. It was not possible to have "confidence in negotiations unless there was compliance with the ceasefire," the Georgian minister said.
The OSCE evolved from the Helsinki process that in 1975, during the Cold War, saw the signing of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Speakers also noted the role the OSCE could continue play along with the European Union and NATO.
Among foreign ministers present were also Bernard Kouchner of France, Britain's David Miliband, and Germany's Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Stubb said Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos and Steinmeier had suggested that ministers meet for a lengthier discussion on the security structure.
Stubb, who succeeded Moratinos as holder of the rotating chairmanship, earlier said the chairmanship year had included "some bad news," specifically mentioning the "ferocious conflict and war in Georgia."
Work was continuing on a political declaration, Stubb said.
Steinmeier said there was "urgent" need for "a new start when it comes to arms control."
He said Germany planned to host a meeting to discuss the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), which Russia suspended in protest at US plans to create a missile-defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Miliband said he supported the German plan, and backed OSCE military monitoring in Georgia and its breakaway regions.
Absent was US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has travelled to India and Pakistan in an attempt to defuse tensions between the two South Asian neighbours after the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
The OSCE's activities include election monitoring. It has also been engaged in efforts to solve so-called frozen conflicts involving the breakaway regions of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan and Transnistria in Moldova.
Stubb and other speakers also noted the organization's efforts to tackle human trafficking and drugs.
