The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) will adopt new anti-terror measures and increase its top administrator's powers at a meeting in Sofia this week, the group's chairman said on Sunday. Solomon Passy, Bulgaria's foreign minister and holder of the OSCE's rotating chair, said he expected the organisation's 55 members also to agree on action to fight the illegal arms trade.
"I expect a renewed agreement on the need to make fighting terrorism our top priority," he said in written replies to questions from Reuters a day before OSCE foreign ministers begin their two-day conference in the Bulgarian capital.
"There will undoubtedly be a new package of concrete measures in areas such as improving the security of containers, restricting terrorist use of the Internet, and combating illegal trade in small arms and light weapons."
The OSCE, set up in the closing days of the Cold War as a forum for talks between the West and the Soviet bloc, has become a leading human rights and crisis management group of 55 nations, from North America across Europe to Russia.
In a draft resolution seen by Reuters that is expected to be fine-tuned at the meeting, OSCE members pledge to improve their efforts to combat terrorism while meeting all international obligations on human rights, refugee and humanitarian law.
Passy said another major topic at the December 6-7 meeting would be reforming the OSCE to give greater power to its Vienna-based general secretary.
Passy has urged reform to enable the organisation to cope with new threats of terrorism, and has called for a shift in its focus toward central Asia and the Caucasus.
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