Suren ZOLYAN Rector of Yerevan Bryussov State Linguistic University CE Expert Professor Ph.D. (Philology) As the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was reformed in the early 1990s, it changed its name to OSCE (an "Organization" succeeding the "Conference"), strengthened its institutions and administration, expanded its functions in the field of elections monitoring and enforcement of democratic procedures - at the same time, it failed to address either politico-legal or military technical aspects of settlement of conflicts caused by the disintegration of such federal states as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Accordingly, the problems related to these conflicts did not go away. Theoretically, the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the partly complementary European Charter of Local Self-Government and стр. 47 the Charter on Minority and Regional Languages (though their ratification was a mandatory requirement for new members joining the Council of Europe, most of them, just like a range of "old members", have not done it until now) constitute sufficient instruments for preventing potential conflicts and settling existing ones. However, at the Council of Europe, which was in its time patterned after a club, legal decisions are limited to recommendations and compliance control, to monitoring mechanisms. Monitoring covers only the countries, which ratified the said conventions - whereas, as the joke goes at the Council of Europe, the willingness to ratify them is inversely proportional to availability of problems requiring solution. It would therefore appear worthwhile to once again consider the principles and methods of addressing conflicts that were discussed at CSCE/OSCE at the time when this organization proclaimed as its priority task prevention and peaceful settlement of regional conflicts, regarded as the biggest threat to Europe's ... Читать далее