Külügyi Szemle - A Teleki László Intézet Külpolitikai Tanulmányok Központja folyóirata - 2002 (1. évfolyam)
2002 / 4. szám - RÉSUMÉ - Osvát Szabolcs: From Aerial Reconnaissance till Confidence-building: The History of the Treaty on Open Skies
Resumé Szabolcs Osvát: From Aerial Reconnaissance till Confidence-building: The Flistonj of the Treaty on Open Skies After a long ratification period the Treaty on Open Skies entered into force at the beginning of the year. This event provided the opportunity to publish a study on a topic that everybody has heard about but very few has detailed knowledge of. The study tries to be international and Hungarian at the same time: it describes the eventful history of the treaty, explains the reasons behind the ratification delay and shows the Hungarian efforts to put such a sophisticated confidence-building and/or verification regime in motion. The European security landscape has changed a lot since the negotiations on open skies and most of the fluctuations had a certain impact on the ratification. The Soviet Union, later the Russian Federation was a key-player: the treaty could not enter into force until the Russian side had doubts about it or had interior motives to trade with it. The presentation of an active Hungarian participation is far from being exaggerated. Hungary has always appreciated to be a co-depository sky of the treaty and took the responsibility from the very outset to facilitate its negotiations, signing and entry into force. An interesting venture was the Hungarian-Romanian Open Skies Agreement of 1991 that proved to be an extremely useful tool to convince the hesitant international community about the idea of open skies as well as to improve bilateral military relations in times of political tensions. The result is a well-trained open skies personnel, a cost-effective way of implementation and a lot of experiences to be shared with other states-parties. The ratification period, otherwise to say the years of provisional application served the preparation for the full implementation. The treaty established a comprehensive regime and its application offers several possibilities from military reconnaissance through confidence- and contact building till environment protection and disaster release. This colourful range of making use of it balances the relative high costs of an observation flight and should encourage the active participation of its states parties and encourage other states to join the regime. 2002. tél 215
