OSCE to stay on in Estonia

TALLINN - The permanent council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe's human rights arm, meeting in Vienna on June 28, voted to extend the mandate of its mission to Estonia by another six months to Dec.31.

The previous day, Sweden's foreign minister, Anna Lindh, told the council that the work of the OSCE missions in Estonia and Latvia was a success story.

"As a result of close and productive cooperation by the two countries' governments with the missions and the OSCE's high commissioner on national minorities, a closure of the missions by the end of this year now seems possible," she said.

The OSCE established three missions to Estonia in 1993 in Tallinn, Narva and Johvi. The mission in Riga opened the same year.

According to the committee of senior officials of the OSCE, the objective of the mission is to further promote integration and better understanding between the communities in Estonia.

The OSCE mission in Tallinn, meanwhile, suffered from so-called "cable theft" when a significant part of their Internet connection cable was stolen on July 2, leaving the office unwired for a day, said the secretary of the mission.

The OSCE is concerned about the Russian Orthodox Church's registration problems in Estonia, according to John Parker, director of the OSCE's office of ethnic minorities in The Hague.

Parker said at a freedom of religion seminar in The Hague that the OSCE will ask its mission in Estonia to study the situation with the church, which answers to the Moscow Patriarchate.

"The Hague office can't command us. The concrete tasks should come from Vienna," Machl noted.

Russia's RIA-Novosti news agency reported that the Russian delegation at the seminar stressed that Estonian officials declined to register the church for the seventh time.

Members of the Russian delegation added that the Churches and Congregations Act passed in Estonia on June 13 makes it impossible to register the church. However, Estonian President Lennart Meri refused on June 29 to endorse a law that was criticized by various religious organizations, stating that it contains undue restrictions for some religious unions.