President Ivan Gašparovič and Foreign Affairs Minister Mikuláš Dzurinda are departing on November 30 for an OSCE summit in Astana, Kazakhstan on December 1 and 2, the Presidential Office's press department informed the TASR newswire.
After the recent NATO-Russia summit in Lisbon, this will be another occasion aimed at improving relations between East and West, TASR wrote. The ambition of the summit is to deepen the negotiations on security problems stretching from Vancouver to Vladivostok.
Slovakia is interested in reaching an agreement on modernising the regime of both armaments and disarmament and providing OSCE with the necessary tools and a mandate enforcing more flexible conflict prevention. Slovakia wants to see OSCE have a more important role in the sphere of energy security, as this directly influences its national security.
Two years after the violent conflict in Georgia, OSCE's role in providing a forum for EU and NATO member states and non-members should be re-established, TASR wrote. In Astana, the world leaders are also hoping to define the new role for OSCE in the 21st century. The most urgent security threats to be dealt with by the summit include ongoing conflicts in the former territories of the Soviet Union, terrorism, human trafficking and drug trafficking, nuclear weapons, energy and other supra-national issues.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
