A summit meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) opened at the Palace of Independence in the Kazakh capital Astana on Wednesday morning, with Greece represented by Prime Minister George Papandreou and foreign minister Dimitris Droutsas.

Papandreou stressed the need for a new “security community” when he addressed the summit.

The summit, he said, provided an opportunity for renewing the member countries’ commitment to the cause of regional security, but was also a challenge “given that we are in a different era, in which organised crime, drug trafficking and human trafficking, terrorism, migration due to climate change, access to drinking water, and violation of human rights, are the forms of security policy in the 21st century that need to be addressed”.

Papandreou said that much still remains to be done in order to have effective joint actions, and for that very reason organisations such as the OSCE have great importance, given the increasing acknowledgement that no country can, on its own, tackle problems of such magnitude. He added that, paradoxically, “we are also seeing a rekindling of nationalism”, which he attributed to insecurity among people that leads them to seeking refuges rather than common solutions to the common problems.

Papandreou further referred to the international financial markets, noting an increase in inequality among countries.

“The economic crisis, in which the profits are private and the losses are ‘socialised’ could definitely lead to a political and social instability, and inequality, in my view, is one of the causes of the global economic imbalance,” Papandreou said, and voiced backing for Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s proposal for the incorporation of economic stability in the OSCE agenda.

Another key to regional security is cooperation on the migration problem, Papandreou said, noting that this is a great source of concern for Greece given that 90 percent of illegal migrants to the EU had used the Greek borders as their gateway to the rest of the EU last year.

He noted the dual task of protecting the human dignity of both legal and illegal migrants and refugees on the one hand and on the other preserving the cohesion of the communities, which are unable to incorporate the immense number of arrivals on the Greek borders, and stressed the Greek proposal for the creation of a migration network so as to deepen and expand the dialogue on the migration problem.

He called for the deepening of the cooperation among the 56 OSCE member countries so that “our societies will become more substantive, more open and more consolidated, at the same time broadening our perception on what democracy means in the new technological era of the mass media and the internet, which allows greater participation on the one hand, but on the other hand entails dangers if we allow violation of personal confidentiality”.

Papandreou had a series of sideline meetings in Astana on Wednesday morning, beginning with British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and with with European Council president Herman van Rompuy and and US secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

He also met with Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd.

Source: ANA, Reuters