The August war in Georgia and European security pact will be high on the agenda of a two-day OSCE foreign ministerial council, which opens in Helsinki on December 4.

Finland, the current chairmanship of the 56-member organization, which will hand over the OSCE’s annual presidency to Greece next month, hopes to secure agreement on a joint political declaration at the Council - something last achieved in 2002 in Portugal.

Diplomats in Helsinki said there was a paragraph about Georgia in the declaration, but talks were still ongoing on the wording.

“We will mention conflict in Georgia in the declaration in one form or anther,” Finnish Foreign Minister and OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Alexander Stubb, said at a news conference on December 3.

He, however, also said that he would withdraw the document “if I see any watering down of this declaration, anything that would even allude to the weakening of the basic principles that the OSCE holds to – be it human rights, democracy, use of non-violence in the conflict resolution.”

Although not part of the official agenda of the summit, the issue of OSCE mission’s mandate in Georgia will be discussed informally by the diplomats on the sideline of Council.

Moscow is insisting on modifying mandates of OSCE missions in Georgia. Russia says that a new mandate for the mission is needed to reflect the new realities that have emerged aftermath of the August war. The Russian diplomats insist on a separate OSCE mandate for OSCE field presence in South Ossetia, which would be independent of the Tbilisi office. How the matter is resolved will largely determine whether the OSCE military observers will be able or not to return back to Tskhinvali. According to the current mandate, OSCE is authorized to have eight observers in the Tskhinvali field office; OSCE withdrew its staff from Tskhinvali when the war broke out in the region.
 
“We do have some proposals on how to renew the mandate, which comes to an end on December 31, but I will leave those proposals to discretion of our negotiators,” Finnish Foreign Minister Stubb said.

“These proposals are quite creative and good and I hope we can find a common solution.”

A Finnish diplomat, Heikki Talvitie, who is a special representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, will visit Moscow on December 8 to discuss these proposals with the Russian counterparts.

“There will be no decisions from this Helsinki meeting [on the issue of the mandate],” Terhi Hakala, a Finnish diplomat who is head of OSCE Mission in Georgia, told journalists in Helsinki. “We will have consultations [on the matter in Helsinki] and we will then continue [discussions] in Vienna [in OSCE headquarters], so do not expect any results on the mission mandate; it will come closer to Christmas.”

Finnish Foreign Minister Stubb said that like his Greek counterpart, Dora Bakoyannis, an incoming OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, he believes that OSCE should have observers inside the region. He said that presence of observers would help to verify reports coming from the region about shooting incidents.

"We will make every effort needed [in this regard]," the Greek Foreign Minister Bakoyannis told Reuters on December 4. "There must be OSCE observers, we must be able to have a complete, realistic picture of what's really happening. If goodwill is expressed by all, we'll find a solution."

Currently, OSCE observers are able to monitor situation on the ground, alongside with EU monitors, in the areas adjacent to breakaway South Ossetia. In a rare exception, OSCE observers, however, were able to enter inside the village of Perevi last week, where OSCE patrol was escorted by the Russian servicemen, which are manning a checkpoint there.