OSCE/PERMANENT COUNCIL: INTERVENTION ON

UNCLAS STATE 043645

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: MO OSCE PGOV PREL RO
SUBJECT: OSCE/PERMANENT COUNCIL: INTERVENTION ON
PRIORITIZING OSCE ACTIVITIES


1. Post is authorized to make the following statement at the
April 30 Permanent Council meeting in Vienna:

Begin text:

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.

With the discussion of the Program Budget Performance Report
currently underway in the ACMF, we are reminded of our call
last year for each participating State to think seriously
about which OSCE programs are priorities for the
organization, and which are not. We continue to believe
that, in these times of limited resources and global
financial crisis, it is imperative that we concentrate our
efforts on those things the organization does best, and where
it adds the most value.

While we all talk a lot about prioritization, we have not
been as successful in articulating clear priorities to help
guide the Secretariat in their preparation of the budget.
The participating States should more clearly articulate a
vision of the OSCE,s priorities. Our organization cannot be
all things to all States. We encourage the Chairmanship to
lead a discussion during the upcoming Program Outline of what
our priorities are, and what they are not. For the United
States, we will continue to prioritize programs that advance
the OSCE's core values, including strengthening the
implementation of participating States, commitments in all
three dimensions.

In preparation for that effort, we would like to suggest that
each participating State identify its top priority programs.
For example, last year,s Program Outline contained roughly
90 distinct functional programs, excluding executive
management and administrative support functions. We would
like to propose that each State generate an indicative list
of its top 30 priority programs. If all of these lists were
compiled, it would generate an interesting rank order of
programs widely supported, programs with some support, and
programs with very little support at all. While there is no
clear connection between low ratings and program elimination,
using such a list would very much facilitate the hard work of
determining where resources should be focused. If we combine
that analysis also with a sober review of unspent OSCE
resources in past years, and the programs that are
historically inefficient in utilizing budget allocations, we
believe we will significantly help our ACMF experts to move
ahead on the 2010 Unified Budget proposal.

We recognize there will be those who would say that
everything the organization does is somehow, by definition, a
top priority. Such a viewpoint ignores the reality of scarce
resources. Such a view also ignores the fact that some
programs may have been useful ten or fifteen years ago, but
may have lost their relevance over the course of the years.
Yet other programs may, in fact, have successfully completed
their tasks, but continue merely due to bureaucratic inertia.
We believe that the prioritization exercise we propose will
help us clean out these completed or expired programs,
allowing the organization to focus on its true value added as
we move into the second decade of the 21st century.

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
CLINTON