Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

Baroness Morgan of Ely Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, Russia is a member of the OSCE, which is one of the advantages of the OSCE. We wish that Russia were a more constructive member of the OSCE and we are very conscious of the heavy constraints under which the Special Monitoring Mission is now being forced to operate.

[Baroness Morgan of Ely (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the OSCE’s main purposes is to provide an inclusive regional instrument for early warning conflict prevention and crisis management. With this in mind, what more could the OSCE have done to prevent the conflict in Ukraine from developing?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It would be easier if we had all anticipated quite how the conflict might develop. Ukraine has many problems and its last Government were in some ways structurally corrupt. There is a great deal that Ukraine needs to change to recover its economy and provide a much better quality of governance. I have to say that the number of new Ministers in the new Government who have experience outside Ukraine and who are not part of this corrupt network is very encouraging.