Briefing Paper : Charting Path to Safer, More Stable Europe

The News:

The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe will hold a massive summit conference in Helsinki, Finland, on Thursday and Friday, with the heads of government, led by President Bush, hoping to chart the way toward a safer and more stable Europe.

Against a backdrop of conflict in splintering Yugoslavia and among the newly independent nations of the former Soviet Union, leaders of the 52-member CSCE will sign a political declaration on the fighting and probably formally agree to conventional arms reductions on the Continent. (There’s some question whether the newly independent Eastern European states can ratify the necessary documents in time.)

The euphoria that surrounded the last CSCE summit meeting in Paris in November, 1990, following the unification of Germany, has evaporated.

True, the Soviet threat that once seemed to endanger the security of Western Europe no longer exists, and for that the Continent has breathed easier. But with the relaxing of tough Communist control in the nations of Eastern Europe and various movements toward autonomy, new ethnic clashes have erupted.

“In some ways,” a CSCE delegation member said, “we are facing a more dangerous and intractable situation in the post-Cold War era.”

The Background:

The CSCE process was established in 1972 and produced the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 on East-West relations. Thirty-five nations, including the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, signed the pact.

The document underscored the status quo in Europe and was seen by Moscow as a victory because it conceded Soviet hegemony over its satellites. In return, the Soviets promised to observe various human rights conventions.

Since then, there have been CSCE review conferences in Belgrade, Madrid, Vienna and now Helsinki, where diplomats have been meeting since March. The membership has grown dramatically with the splintering of Yugoslavia and breakup of the Soviet Union, and the CSCE has stretched the concept of Europe to include former Soviet states in Asia such as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The organization recently established a small administrative secretariat in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and a nascent Center for Conflict Prevention in Vienna.

Previously bound to act only by unanimous consent, the CSCE has established a new principle called “consensus minus one,” under which an aggressor nation could be disciplined by the other members.

The Players:

The leaders of all the CSCE nations will be invited to speak at the two general sessions Thursday and Friday. Thus, speakers will include Bush, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, British Prime Minister John Major, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Francois Mitterrand--as well as leaders from tiny San Marino, Monaco and Liechtenstein.

But the conference offers the possibility for plenty of off-the-cuff bilateral meetings among the major leaders, who are expected to try and thrash out a coherent policy on such knotty problems as a measured, effective response to continued fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Also, Bush and Yeltsin may disagree on whether to allow Serbia to inherit the Yugoslav seat at the conference and whether to expel or suspend the Belgrade regime. The Russian leader has generally been more reluctant to impose sanctions on the Serbs than Bush.

The Missing Player:

The regime in Belgrade, which claims the Yugoslav seat at the CSCE, has announced that it will not attend the Helsinki meeting.

Diplomats see the decision as a ploy to avoid being expelled from the organization. The CSCE may well decide to suspend membership of Serbia-Montenegro because of the attacks by Serb irregular forces in Sarajevo and other Bosnian cities.

Three former Yugoslav republics--Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia--have already been recognized as independent countries and are members of the CSCE. They may lobby for collective military action against Serb forces.

The Outlook:

The conference is expected to come up with two documents: a political declaration on current issues such as the fighting in Yugoslavia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Moldova, and a much longer report on the future of the CSCE.

The latter would include the key issue of the relationship between the CSCE and military umbrella groupings like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Western European Union--either of which might carry out CSCE mandates by sending military units to separate warring factions.

The delegates are also expected to commit CSCE to act early in issuing peacekeeping mandates to settle disputes and, importantly, to create a high commissioner for national minorities who would try to devise ways to avoid or dampen clashes among the squabbling ethnic groups in Europe.

The CSCE will continue to push for respect for human rights among member nations, strengthening structures for monitoring violations. And the meeting may also offer Japan a special status to underline its importance and links to the mainly European organization.

Western diplomats say the Helsinki summit is important because specific steps will be spelled out for the CSCE’s future role in European affairs.

The leaders are also expected to clarify the means for requesting and mounting peacekeeping missions.

“In the past,” one CSCE ambassador said, “we had ringing declarations on intents and purposes. This time we are deciding on concrete steps on detailed mechanisms for conflict prevention and crisis management--and ways to deal with the fallout like the refugee crisis.

“We will produce a document with lots of meat in it.”