The Foreign Ministers of the 55 countries participating in the OSCE met in December 2001, in Bucharest, at the meeting of the Ministerial Council of the OSCE, a moment that marked the end of the Romanian presidency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The meeting in Bucharest was organized in accordance with the decisions taken at the summits in Helsinki (1992), Budapest (1994), Lisbon (1996) and Istanbul (1999).
Together with the President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the meeting was attended by the
US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, the German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, the Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, the EU Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, the Minister of Foreign Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres and the foreign ministers of the other states participating in the OSCE.
Among the participants were Japan, South Korea, Thailand (states that are OSCE partners), as well as Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia (states that are part of the group of cooperation partners).
The participants adopted three documents: a political statement, a statement on the fight against terrorism and a statement on resolving situations in conflict zones.
Progress in the field of confidence-building and security measures provided for in the Dayton Accords, which entered into force in January 2002, was evaluated.
The declaration regarding the fight against terrorism contained provisions regarding the need to adopt common priorities and an action plan, as well as the need to coordinate OSCE actions in the field of the fight against terrorism with those to combat human or drug trafficking.
