Minister of Defence Mr. Seppo Kääriäinen, OSCE Visit to Finland under the Vienna Document 99, Karelia Brigade

It is a great pleasure to welcome you all to Finland and to this visit to the Karelia Brigade as well as to the air base visit in Karelia Air Command.

I hope these few days ahead of you will confirm to you our determination to defend our country in a credible way. At the same time I hope that this visit will leave you with good memories based on the transparency and openness in which we aim to conduct this exercise.

I would like to share with you a few words regarding Finnish Defence Policy. The basic defence policy elements are based on the territorial defence concept with a relatively large reserve to defend the whole country. The feasible option to guarantee this is the general conscription army. Finland takes actively part in international co-operation and peace support operations.

Finland is at the moment preparing the new White Paper 2004, which is the Security and Defence Policy Report of the government to the parliament. It is conducted under the guidance of the Prime Minister's Office and all the relevant ministries are represented in this important process. The White Paper is formulated at a crucial time when the international security environment is rapidly evolving and we are faced with new kinds of threats. Also the key international players and organizations, such as the UN, the OSCE, EU and NATO are adapting to the new security environment. All these elements have to be incorporated into and accurately reflected in our international as well as national defence policy.

You have come to visit us within the framework of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The strength of this organization lies in its comprehensive approach to security as well as in its wide membership. The OSCE is the largest regional security organization in the world with 55 participating States from Europe, Central Asia and North America.

Finland holds high the key instruments of the OSCE. In particular, the relevant instruments to the security sector are the Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security, the Document on Small Arms and Light Weapons as well the Vienna Document of 1999. As you might know, the origin of the OSCE Confidence and Security Building Measures Regime carries the name of our capital city Helsinki. The cornerstone of this regime was agreed already in 1975 in a Document called the Helsinki Final Act. Within this confidence and security building regime the participating States agreed to certain measures designed to contribute to reducing the dangers of armed conflict and of misunderstanding or miscalculation of military activities. These were at the time very remarkable measures.

We believe that exchanging views in a transparent way on matters relating to the politico-military dimension of security has proven to be crucially important in creating the kind of Europe we have today. The regime has developed over time and paved the way for the new measures, which were introduced in the Vienna Document 1999. Your visit under the VD99 confirms that we have been successful in designing a tool that is still relevant today. I wish you a successful and fruitful visit to Finland and I hope that this is a good opportunity to familiarize yourselves with our defence concept.

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