VILNIUS, 18 December 2011 – OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis expressed his sadness today at the death of former Czech President Vaclav Havel and paid tribute to his courage and vision for a free Europe.

VILNIUS, 16 December 2011 – OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis expressed his concern at the violent clashes in the western Kazakhstan town of Zhanaozen today in which at least 10 people died and others, including several police officers, were injured, and appealed for calm.

VIENNA, 15 December 2011 – The 56 OSCE participating States welcomed today the success achieved by the OSCE Office in Zagreb in fulfilling its mandate as well as the progress made by the host country, and decided after 15 years of OSCE field presence in Croatia to close its Office in Zagreb by the end of this year.

GENEVA, 14 December 2011 – Developing synergies through multiple confidence-building measures and reaching out to different communities can help support efforts towards conflict resolution, said Giedrius Čekuolis, the Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office for Protracted Conflicts, following the 18th round of the Geneva Discussions today.

The concluding seminar in the “V to V Dialogue” series of expert seminars organized by the Lithuanian OSCE Chairmanship began in Kahlenberg, near Vienna, on 14 December 2011. The one-day event, entitled "Towards a Genuine Security Community", aims to evaluate the progress made by the OSCE in 2011 towards implementing the vision of a Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security community, endorsed by the OSCE Heads of State and Government at their Summit in Astana last year, and identify the challenges ahead.

VILNIUS, 7 December 2011 - The OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis, highlighted the progress achieved at the Vilnius Ministerial Council and urged the 56 OSCE participating States to build on the decisions taken and address the challenges raised at the meeting, which concluded today.

“Over the past days Vilnius has been home to a vital debate on the security challenges that we face in our 56 States and in neighbouring regions,” he said. “I am not only referring to the decisions we as foreign ministers have taken, but also to the civil society activists who have travelled from as near as neighbouring Belarus and as far as North Africa, to meet with government officials and each other, to provide their views and recommendations for taking the work of the OSCE forward.”

The Lithuanian Foreign Minister is surprised that employees of the Russian Embassy misinform head of the Russian diplomacy about the words of the Lithuanian Foreign Minister spoken to the Lithuanian media. To quote accurately, the Minister told the media that “the question of occupation is, was and will remain on our agenda.”

On the other hand, the Minister does not wonder about such disinformation, because, as the practice of Lithuanian diplomats shows, a direct dialogue with our Russian colleagues in Moscow is usually more constructive than work with the country’s Embassy in Vilnius.

VILNIUS, 6 December 2011 – The OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis, today condemned yesterday’s bomb attacks in Afghanistan in which over 60 people were killed and many injured.

VILNIUS, 6 December 2011 – A meeting of international and regional organizations to promote closer co-ordination of responses to changes in the southern Mediterranean was held by OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier and UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe in Vilnius today.

The Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), Ambassador Janez Lenarcic, gave a briefing to journalists on the margins of the OSCE Ministerial council in Vilnius on 6 December 2011.