Human rights, press freedom on OSCE agenda

Protection of journalists and human rights are on the agenda of Tuesday's Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe meeting.Also considered likely during the two-day OSCE Foreign Ministers Council meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, was a separate encounter between the foreign affairs chiefs of Armenia and Azerbaijan to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, one of the OSCE's "frozen conflicts."The OSCE's current Lithuanian presidency has indicated it will elevate human rights issues during the annual meeting, which include the foreign ministers of all of the 56 OSCE participating states.Rytis Paulauskas, director of the OSCE Chairmanship Department in Lithuania's Foreign Ministry, said his country is putting particular importance on taking action on the human dimensions of the OSCE's work.Included on that list is "media freedom and the security of journalists," he told the organization's permanent council in Vienna last month.The OSCE Parliament Assembly's Committee to Protect Journalists has reported that more than 45 journalists have been killed in the OSCE area in the last decade, with no suspects ever convicted for their crimes."Diplomats in Vilnius should use the stronger language that we already voted on calling for vigorous prosecution of all those responsible for murdering investigative reporters," Matteo Mecacci, an Italian member of the assembly, wrote in The Moscow Times.Mecacci said this year's agenda in Vilnius better reflects the concerns of the OSCE lawmakers, who have longed urged more attention be paid to strengthening national human rights institutions within the member states."(The agenda echoes) the longstanding position of the Parliamentary Assembly that engagement with civil society is essential to produce policy solutions in the human dimension -- the field that has defined the OSCE's comprehensive approach to security," wrote Mecacci, chairman of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions.One such OSCE trouble spot has been Turkmenistan, where press freedom issues have been at the forefront of its efforts.Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, last month wrapped up a roundtable event with Turkmen government and legislative officials in Ashgabat saying she was "encouraged by the discussions" about the need for the country's oppressive media laws to be reformed.But she also said she wanted to see real reform in a Turkmen media environment that continues to be blasted by critics as one of the worst in the world.The country's five television stations, 25 newspapers and 15 magazines remain under absolute government control while foreign broadcasts are censored and Internet access is filtered by the state-run provider, Reporters Without Borders said in May.On the security side in Vilnius, a sidelines meeting between Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers Edward Nalbandian and Elmar Mammadyarov was widely expected in a bid to strengthen the 1994 cease-fire along the border of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.It would be significant because it would be in addition to the long running formal discussions as part of the OSCE's Minsk Group, which includes France, Russia and the United States.Since late October, two Armenian and two Azerbaijani soldiers have died in violations of the cease-fire along the contact line separating the two countries' troops, the Azeri Press Agency reported.It said the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry last week denied reports from the majority-Armenian enclave that seven of its soldiers had been killed.