Member-only story
OSCE meeting preceded by Stockholm airport traffic jam and organizational chaos
Wednesday evening December 1, the eve of the 28th Ministerial meeting of the 57- member Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), saw chaos and vehicle traffic at a near standstill at Arlanda, Sweden’s largest and busiest airport.
The OSCE event came as the two-day NATO foreign minister’s conference ended in the Latvian capital Riga and some participants from the NATO event as well as delegations from elsewhere in Europe arrived in Stockholm by commercial and government aircraft under very tight security
An air Baltic flight from Riga carrying a Latvian delegation and officials from other countries who had been at the NATO meeting arrived on time, but “ordinary” passengers were held on the aircraft until official OSCE attendees debarked.
Media representatives, including a Polish TV journalist and another journalist from Latvia, as well as two members of a Canadian parliamentary delegation travelling to the OSCE event and several visitors to Stockholm were left without their checked baggage for almost three hours. Little or no information was given as to when it would be delivered from the aircraft.
One young woman from Latvia broke down in tears as her planned evening business meetings were forced to be cancelled…
