Helsinki's Uncertain Future

...Second, it must "respect existing borders, internal and external," with any changes to be made "by peaceful and consensual means...

...They have agreed to impose a host of restrictions upon migrants and migration...

...The East European societies ceased being closed," she wrote...

...By the time the unprecedented Helsinki "Conference on the Human Dimension" convened in Moscow last fall, free elections, political pluralism and the rule of law had swept through Central and Eastern Europe...

...The fourth stage is similarly manda-toryand also involves a fact-finding inquiry, but bypasses attempts at mediation altogether...

...Notorious allies of Hitler responsible for wartime massacres of Jews, like Marshal Ion Antonescu of Romania and Father Tiso of Slovakia, have been publicly lionized by their nationalist countrymen...

...The tradition of democracy and human rights, the essence of the Helsinki process, is not very deep in the most Western parts of the former USSR, and it is even more tenuous in the six successor Moslem republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus...

...In Moscow, Kampelman won endorsement for the idea of replacing the Office of Free Elections with an Office of Democratic Institutions...

...Ukraine has taken a significant initiative along these lines with respect to the Babi Yar killing field on the outskirts of Kiev...

...NOT SURPRISINGLY, a major objective of the U.S...

...His successor in Russia, Boris N. Yeltsin, has avoided a public stand on the issue and appears especially hesitant to criticize the hate-mongering Pamyat group...

...The sole exception was the Baltic States, whose incorporation within the USSR was correctly recognized as a product of the secret Nazi-Soviet Pact...

...In Moscow it was emphatically agreed that "issues relating to human rights, fundamental freedoms, democracy, and the rule of law are of international concern...

...In the event that mediation fails or a member simply refuses to invite mediators, the third stage permits any concerned CSCE state, if supported by five other states, to arrange through the secretariat for a panel of three rapporteurs to conduct a fact-finding inquiry...

...Slovenes and Croatians in Yugoslavia took up the option last June, continuing a trend triggered by the Baltics, and there is no telling where it might end...

...It is linked to the new institutional apparatus and is further evidence of the revolutionary transformation of the Helsinki process from a non-formal structure without a bureaucracy, without even an address, into an elaborate organization...

...They were spelled out at the November 19-21 Paris summit of heads of state, in a document then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher appropriately dubbed a second Magna Carta...

...In this area, additional fine-tuning or, as Kampelman put it in Moscow, "wordsmithing," would be a waste of time...

...That could usefully be accompanied by a tough-minded "review of implementation" focusing on each CSCE state...

...A four-stage operation is stipulated...

...When the charges were broadcast back into the Eastern countries by the BBC or Radio Liberty / Radio Free Europe, a kind of consciousness-raising took place among the citizenry...

...Perhaps the greatest challenge to Helsinki's new European order, though, is the drive for self-determination in the various former Communist multinational states...

...Now, if human or minority rights are at issue in a particular CSCE country, a group of other members, ranging from six to 10, can mandate sending in a special fact-finding and observation mission...

...Thus Moscow was now perceived as a perfectly natural place to hold a human rights meeting-a triumph of the Helsinki process...

...How the drive toward self-determination squares with another fundamental Helsinki principle concerning the "inviolability of borders," however, is not quite clear...

...His address was deliberately designed to evoke Aleksandr Pushkin's soaring lyrics dedicated to autumn...

...Yet, as Pushkin had understood and as Baker's listeners clearly recognized, next came the winter with its harsh unpredictability...

...Last September, when the Helsinki process reached an apotheosis with the opening of a "Conference on the Human Dimension" in Moscow, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were approved as members...

...Fifth, it must respect "international law and obligations, especially adherence to the provisions of the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris...

...The aftershock extended the following autumn to the last European outpost of totalitarianism, Albania...

...The foundation of a new monument to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust has been laid at the site, and an elaborate educational program about the Holocaust's meaning has been set in motion...

...In other parts of Eastern Europe the deepening bigotry recalls Paul Lendvai's striking late '60s book, Anti-Semitism Without Jews...

...If a state with an inter ethnic or human rights problem is nonetheless reluctant to invite outside experts, the second stage allows another CSCE member to encourage the one undergoing the tension to seek mediation...

...Initially the CSCE consisted of 35 states from Europe and North America (the U.S...

...It nearly did...

...Even when the targeted state objects, it is obliged to cooperate...

...The critical matter here is what Kampelman has called the "chemistry" resulting from the new ingredients...

...Bloat and bureaucracy could undermine what was a unique structure...

...First, no longer can a CSCE state prevent vigorous action to protect human and minority rights on the grounds that this would violate the Helsinki Final Act's principle of nonintervention in a country's internal affairs...

...The information revolution no longer allowed official propaganda to cover up the unseemly aspects of life...

...Whether the CSCE can become effective in settling violent nationality conflicts is unclear...

...But it has yet to develop a plan to do precisely that...

...Two crucial elements distinguish this step: The resisting state must accept the inquiry, and the fact-finding report will very likely be judgmental...

...Ironically, it was the West that insisted at Helsinki meetings on the right of everyone to leave any country...

...The CSCE, at its outset, viewed the nationality drive as manageable in the context of assuring unfulfilled or unresolved minority rights...

...A CSO emergency session can be called when a single member, backed by 12 others, believes that conditions in a particular state warrant it...

...WHAT is in any event stunningly evident is that two almost axiomatic features of the Helsinki process have practically been discarded...

...So it remains for the Helsinki meeting to consider how the new Office can best contribute to advancing political pluralism, the rule of law and minority rights...

...Each CSCE member is to submit three names for a resource list that will be kept in the offices of the secretariat...

...Since then the CSCE has ballooned to 48 members through the addition of the newly independent republics of the former USSR...

...A single state was able to veto an otherwise unanimous agreement...

...The consensus approach has been further eroded by a decision of the CSCE Council of Foreign Ministers with reference to "emergency'' meetings of the executive authority, the Committee of Senior Officials...

...Where an ethnic or human rights situation in a member state is deemed extremely serious and urgent, another concerned CSCE state, when supported by nine additional states, can set in motion a formal observation inquiry by a panel of rapporteurs...

...xenophobia and anti-Semitism...

...The provision is particularly important to the Jews: 200,000 of them reside in the Moslem states, and a million more live in the other republics...

...That finally led to the UN Secretary General appointing former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance as mediator, and he proved far more successful than anyone else in reducing the violence and pro viding some hope for effective peacekeeping...

...The new Office is meant to advise governments on all aspects of human rights and democracy, not merely on elections, but exactly how it will operate has not been worked out...

...He is currently completing a book tentatively titled "Helsinki, Human Rights and American Policy...

...But its future effectiveness- at a time when Europe is facing a burgeoning racism and an explosive nationalism-is far from certain...

...Retiring U.S...

...Almost from the beginning of the Helsinki process, this was a central aim of the West in dealing with the USSR, and not until 1989 did Moscow acquiesce to the right as it was spelled out in the concluding document of the Vienna review conference...

...In the USSR, where an insidious anti-Semitism has been spreading, Gorbachev finally felt compelled to denounce it publicly after the Moscow meeting...

...Nevertheless, it was unable to end the hostilities and eventually gave way to the UN Security Council...

...The second area revolves around migration and the fear of its impact...

...The dissolution of the USSR and Yugoslavia is hardly the end of the problem...

...The mechanism was shaped at the Moscow meeting, under the pressure of the Yugoslav crisis-the very first open European military conflict in Helsinki history, not to mention the history of postwar Europe...

...The CSCE itself chose in Moscow merely to build upon earlier denunciations of discrimination and to urge "human rights education" for "combating intolerance, religious, racial and ethnic prejudice and hatred, including...

...Considering the crazy-quilt nationality pattern in Eastern Europe, it can hardly avoid generating tensions and, quite possibly, violence...

...From the beginning, the Helsinki process has served as the Pied Piper of freedom...

...at the current Helsinki review conference will be the promotion of democratic modalities...

...in order that those experiences may be remembered [and] may help to teach present and future generations of those events, and thus ensure that they are never repeated...

...The break-up of Yugoslavia could shortly swell the total number to 53...

...Former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze predicted in a March 1990 interview that surprises, crises and catastrophes would occur in East Europe, and that power would be seized by "a great dictator or an operetta dictator...

...While the Helsinki Accords formally sanctioned the principle of self-detennination, the CSCE's stress since 1990 on free elections and "constitutional" governments inevitably handed nationalities the right of "free choice...

...It consists of a secretariat head-quartered in Prague, a Conflict Prevention Center in Vienna, and an Office of Free Elections in Warsaw...

...It received no support, but the subject could be revived in Helsinki...

...The Helsinki conference will have its hands full maintaining its Pied Piper role...

...It was tradeoffs between NATO and former Warsaw Pact members, reached at nonpublic working group meetings, that enabled agreements to be consummated...

...First, a country must conduct itself in accordance "with democratic values and practices...

...Czechoslovakia's Foreign Minister, Jiri Dienstbier, warned in Moscow: "Nations and people who have not enjoyed freedom formerly have difficulties with what to do with the freedom they have gained...

...Stability was the CSCE's primary purpose, not policies destined to lead to instability...

...But as the U.S.' new CSCE Ambassador, John Kornblum, has acknowledged, ancient hostilities in Yugoslavia "overwhelmed" the Helsinki process and its new institutions...

...Previously he had treated the problem as either nonexistent or not meriting serious attention...

...A more systematic-and humanitarian-way of dealing with this is vitally necessary...

...THE CSCE AT TWENTY Helsinki's Uncertain Future BY WILLIAM KOREY As THE Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) enters its 20th year with a climactic three-month review session starting March 24 in Finland's capital, it can take pride in having created the Helsinki process and making human rights the centerpiece of a new European order...

...East Germany's Communist regime could no longer halt avast exodus because its now reformist Hungarian Communist allies insisted upon compliance with Helsinki obligations and facilitated the emigration...

...Secession, after all, means new borders...

...Instead, the CSCE abdicated its responsibility to the European Community by approving its diplomatic involvement...

...WILLIAM KOREY, who represents B'nai B 'rith at CSCE meetings, is an adjunct scholar at the Institute of East-West Security Studies...

...Later, in December, he startled Russians by warning that "dictatorship is coming" to the USSR...

...Such sessions already have been held to grapple with the explosion in Yugoslavia...

...At its core there will be independent panels of expert mediators or rapporteurs...

...The whole question of how the CSCE will fare with the sudden addition of a host of new states is clouded in uncertainty...

...The trend at the CSCE has been in the direction of greater intervention...

...The Helsinki process has built an elaborate system of "constitutional" rights and institutions...

...This is why even racism, anti-Semitism, hatred toward the Gypsies, and a general intolerance have been winning ground in the East European societies...

...Its task is far from completed...

...The Paris summit also established the CSCE's first professional bureaucracy...

...The virtue of the Moscow mechanism is its independent character...

...As for "muscle," the matter of economic sanctions and other forms of action was broached in Moscow by German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher...

...Meanwhile, not only in the recently liberated region but far into Western Europe, violence against Gypsies and those arriving from Southeastern Europe and different continents has been rising...

...It is the full enforcement of the various rights that is essential...

...Estimates of the potential number of migrants range into the double-digit million category...

...Two years later, urged on by Washington and other Western powers, he began applying Helsinki standards in emigration, radio jamming, political arrests, religious liberty, and ethnic-cultural rights...

...One of them has to do with the antagonisms and confusions accompanying self-determination...

...The danger signals being sent up by racism and xenophobic nationalism are everywhere, along with difficulties being caused by radical economic transitions...

...Fourth, it must "safeguard human rights," including "the equal treatment of minorities," and "leaders at all levels of government must forthrightly condemn and combat racial and ethnic hatred [and] anti-Semitism...

...Yet since the consensus principle has been fundamentally breached, it will be difficult to get agreement on steps that go beyond those detailed in the Moscow mechanism...

...THE FIERCE winds of bigotry were, in fact, already blowing across the plains of Eastern Europe...

...Might not the application of the Wilsonian formula lead to the unraveling of an entire democratic country and produce new conflicts...

...In 1986, Soviet leader MikhailS...

...At the very least, the CSCE is bound to become unwieldy, particularly given that its hallmark characteristic has been consensus decisionmaking . Until now numbers were never an issue, because no votes were taken...

...In the first stage, when amember state feels that it is confronting a difficult internal minority rights or human rights problem, it can invite a panel of outside mediators, who will be chosen by a key CSCE secretariat official from the aforementioned list...

...Second, and more significant, was the dilution of the sacred principle of consensus that guided all pre-Moscow resolutions and actions...

...These institutions are to service a Council of Foreign Ministers that will meet annually, and a Committee of Senior Officials (CSO) representing member states that will meet fairly often and function as a kind of executive board...

...At these meetings the West, led by the U.S., documented in detail the extensive violations of human rights in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations...

...Attempts to bridge the gap between Western expertise and Eastern requirements at a November CSCE seminar in Oslo proved disappointing...

...Had the CSCE dealt with the nationality issue there earlier and pushed for a loosely structured confederation, had a greater unity of views about handling the crisis existed among the major Western countries, the bloody civil war might conceivably have been avoided...

...Speaking at Princeton University in December, Secretary Baker indicated that Ambassador Kornblum would visit the new republics to "discuss how CSCE norms can be put into practice.' It was also thought that a CSCE rapporteur mission would engage in a first-hand inquiry into the conduct of each applying state...

...Secretary of State James A. Baker III defined the moment-and entitled his speech accordingly-as "Democracy's Season...

...The EC had the advantage of being able to threaten economic sanctions...

...A special concern about the successor states is the extent of their commitment to Helsinki's insistence upon a person's right to leave a country...

...At the end of January, the CSCE Council of Foreign Ministers, meeting in Prague, formally adopted the change...

...Once the standards of the Helsinki Final Act were loudly trumpeted at follow-up conferences, the totalitarian apparatus could no longer silence either the truth or peoples' aspirations for freedom...

...What emerged by the end of 1990 was a Europe "whole and free," with elaborate "constitutional" specifications for CSCE states...

...sites of remembrance, including most notably [Nazi] extermination camps and the related archives...

...Gorbachev himself began to embrace the human rights language and concepts of Helsinki-in contrast to his predecessors, who had rejected them as either subversive or inappropriate...

...In the Soviet capital, the planted democratic roots had grown so sturdy that a desperate Rightist coup in August fizzled out...

...Third, it must support "the rule of law" and achieve "peaceful change" through "democratic processes, especially elections...

...A top Soviet specialist on East Europe, M. P. Pavlova-Silvanskaya, confirmed recently that the Helsinki process and modern electronics were crucial factors in producing the 1989revolutions...

...and Canada were original participants by virtue of their NATO involvement...

...The one specific step CSCE has adopted-and it is an important one-is the requirement that its member states "preserve and protect...

...Moreover, the enormous impact the Helsinki process had on Eastern Europe, including the USSR, resulted largely from the lengthy review sessions held in Belgrade, Madrid and Vienna, as well as smaller gatherings of experts in a variety of capitals...

...The response from governments in Western and Central Europe scarcely reflects the Helsinki spirit...

...It had been expected that the guidelines for assessing the applications of the former Soviet states would be the "five fundamental principles" propounded by Secretary of State Baker in his Moscow address...

...In the former Soviet Union alone, researchers from the Academy of Sciences have found no less than 75 unsettled border disputes...

...Although it has recently sent a peace mission headed by Czech-oslovakia's Dienstbier to the troubled Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan, the move came after the UN had again turned to Vance and is not likely to yield very much...

...He persuaded his counterparts that mediation would be the best initial approach...

...What form the encouragement might take was not made explicit...

...On the other hand, two newly emergent areas demand attention...

...Keeping that objective in mind, the CSCE has come up with a mechanism for dealing with present-day nationalist conflicts...

...Ambassador Max Kampelman, remembering his experiences as a labor negotiator, pressed for mediation because it is non-judgmental and emphasizes voluntary cooperation...

...This was the procedure before Albania was admitted last June...

...Kampelman, for one, expressed deep doubts at the Moscow meeting about the fulfillment of this right by the successor republics...

...How well it functions, of course, will depend on the readiness of CSCE states to make use of it...

...A revived neo-Nazism, whether in the form of skinheads in Germany or Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in France or chauvinists elsewhere, has assumed a threatening force...

...The political earthquake that shook the satellite Soviet Empire in 1989 and shattered its principal symbol, the Berlin Wall, had its origins in various provisions of the Helsinki Accords, too, especially the right of everyone to leave any country...

...Heretofore, the Kremlin suppressed any reference to Jewish martyrdom at Babi Yar...

...The CSCE members "categorically and irrevocably" declared that Helsinki commitments, old and new, are of "legitimate concern to all participating states and do not belong exclusively to the internal affairs of the state concerned...

...But Genscher urged that in the interest of stability verbal assurances of adherence to Helsinki standards should be accepted, and he prevailed...

...Eastern Europe is still a patch-work pattern of nationalities, and Western Europe is by no means seamless (think of the Basques in Spain or, for that matter, the Quebecois in Canada...