Kazakhstan to host OSCE summit next year.

THE AK-BULAK HOTEL, near Almaty, December 20 (Itar-Tass) - Kazakhstan
that will take over the OSCE chairmanship on January 1, 2010 is planning
to convene a summit of the OSCE member states next year.

Seven CIS leaders attended an informal summit in Almaty on Saturday.
President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev said that he wanted to
discuss the agenda of Kazakhstan's OSCE chairmanship and the OSCE summit
with his CIS colleagues. He added that such meetings hadn't been held for
eleven years.
Nazarbayev said that since Kazakhstan was a collective CIS candidate
to the post of the OSCE chairman, he would like to hear the opinion of
each leader on this matter in the interests of all CIS states.
"This is the first time when a country member of the Collective
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) becomes the OSCE chairman. Kazakhstan
will also represent our interests," Armenian President Serge Sargsyan said.
"We should welcome the initiative of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
(on the need to sign a new European Security Treaty) and talk about how to
make security stronger," Sargsyan went on to say
The Armenian president is sure that the notion of security should be
indivisible.
"We should create mechanisms that could work in real life," he said.
According to Sargsyan, the existing mechanisms, which for a long time have
secured peace and security, have a lot of shortcomings.
"Thus, cases when a country is violating anything haven't been
defined," the Armenian leader went on to say. He gave an example of the
Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty which sets quotas and while some
countries simply violate them, other countries prefer not to talk about it
out loud."
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said that Kyrgyzstan fully
supported Kazakhstan's initiative to host an OSCE summit in Kazakhstan in
2010.
"Today, we cannot consider the security in Europe and Asia as two
separate matters. Today, they should be considered as a whole in the
Eurasian continent. Separate measures will be ineffective," he emphasized.


.
.Black Sea storm breaks dry cargo vessel in two.
20/12 Tass 34

SOCHI, December 20 (Itar-Tass) - A powerful Black Sea storm has broken
a dry cargo ship in two off the coast of Sochi, Semyon Mamoladze, the
deputy director of the Sochi Maritime Port, told Itar-Tass.
The waves threw part of the Ara-1 ship to the beach in Sochi's central
district. The other part of the vessel remained at anchor.
The ship's 13-member crew has been saved.

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