Joao Soares of Portugal elected OSCE PA President

PanARMENIAN.Net - The parliamentarians of the OSCE adopted the Astana Declaration on the final day of its Annual Session in Astana.



The Astana Declaration contains recommendations as well as 19 resolutions. The Declaration will now be shared with all governments of the OSCE.



Joao Soares of Portugal was elected new President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly at its Annual Session in Kazakhstan's capital Astana. He succeeds Goran Lennmarker of Sweden, who has served the maximum two years, the OSCE PA press office told PanARMENIAN.Net



Joao Soares, elected to the customary one-year term, has been involved in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly since 2002, both as deputy head and, presently, as head of the Portuguese delegation. He has been a Vice President of OSCE PA and a member of the Assembly's Bureau since July 2006.



"I strongly believe in the OSCE and its parliamentary dimension," said Joao Soares upon being elected. "The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly has a pivotal role in the future of the whole Organization: promoting the dialogue between all participating states in an inclusive manner, ensuring the respect for the OSCE founding principles and acting towards the resolution of all forms of conflicts. This should be our task, to continue the work that has so bravely started in 1975." Mr. Soares is a veteran election observer, having participated in numerous election observation missions to, among others, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tajikistan, Serbia, and Russia - several times as head and deputy head of the OSCE PA delegation. Most recently, he led the OSCE PA's observation mission at the recent parliamentary elections in Georgia, where he also served as Special Coordinator of all OSCE short-term observers, appointed by the OSCE Chairman-in-Office.



Mr. Soares, a socialist, has been a member of the Portuguese parliament from 1987 to 1990 and again since 2002, elected by the constituency of Lisbon. He is also a member of Member of the Parliamentary Committee on National Defense. He is the former deputy mayor and mayor of Lisbon and is Chairman of UCCLA, the Union of Capital Cities of Portuguese Language. He was a member of Portugal's State Council between 1998 and

2002.



The delegates at the Assembly's Annual Session elected four new Vice Presidents: Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kazakhstan; Wolfgang Grossruck, Austria; Pia Christmas-Moeller, Denmark; and Oleh Bilorus, Ukraine.