Zbigniew Rau made the appeal at an international conference in the central Polish city of Łódź on Friday, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
Poland’s top diplomat was speaking in his role as chairman-in-office of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), as he addressed the closing session of the 29th annual OSCE Ministerial Council meeting.
Rau told the gathering: “There are objective boundaries, which cannot be violated even by the will of a nation.”
He added: “This is the point of my message – for this organization to succeed, all future chairmanships and all peace-loving states must not betray the principles of the Helsinki Final Act and the Paris Charter.”
Hope for making Europe 'whole, free and at peace'
The Polish foreign minister stated that the 1975 Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe “was a promise that the Soviet domination would end and the subjugated nations would reclaim their right to determine their future freely.”
“The spirit of Helsinki was also the spirit of the Polish Solidarity movement – the movement that brought freedom to my homeland,” he added.
The 1990 Paris Charter for a new Europe “brought hope for a successful transformation of Europe, for making it whole, free and at peace as US President Bush said in Mainz in 1989,” Rau told the conference.
He said: “The message from Paris emboldened my nation to make a sovereign decision to tie its future with the community of democratic states, believing in and supporting the rules-based international order.”
Rau went on to say that “similar decisions, taken by a group of states once being satellites of the Soviet Union finally ended the Cold War’s division of Europe,” adding that “such can be the power of law, when only states commit themselves to respecting it.”
‘Ukraine war must be settled with full respect for the will of Ukrainian people’
Rau cautioned that over the next few years, “it will be extremely difficult for this organization to deliver on its mandate” as “there are now participating states which do not aim to decrease tensions and introduce even basic predictability to military matters in Europe.”
He stressed: “And we should not be tempted to think that any real advance in this dimension is possible before the current conflict is settled in an internationally recognized way, in full compliance with international law and with the full respect for the will of the Ukrainian people.”
Rau said that “the next big task for the OSCE” would be “to increase its work in the human and economic dimensions, including on environmental issues.”
He concluded: “The preservation of peace and security, dialogue and co-operation, and the human dimension of the OSCE are the cornerstones of this organization. They are non-negotiable pillars fundamental to our better future, which, as I firmly believe, is coming.”
Poland to hand over rotating presidency of OSCE to North Macedonia
During the closing session of the OSCE Ministerial Council Meeting, Poland’s top diplomat handed over the role of the OSCE’s Chairman-in-Office to North Macedonian Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani, whose country will take over the rotating presidency of the organisation next year.
Osmani stated that “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine must come to an end,” and pledged that this would be one of the central aims of the North Macedonian presidency of the OSCE, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Poland took over the role from Sweden in January, with Rau becoming the OSCE’s Chairperson-in-Office.
This is the second time Poland is chairing the organisation, with its previous turn at the helm in 1998.
Friday is day 282 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, osce.org, youtube.com