MOSCOW, May 6 (RIA Novosti) - Controversy earlier this year over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed showed up the weaknesses of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a Russian OSCE representative said Saturday.
"The cartoon crisis revealed a serious drawback of the OSCE that Russia has long proposed to rectify as part of reforms," Alexei Borodavkin, Russia's permanent representative to the OSCE, told a session of the organization's council in Vienna.
Images of Mohammed are prohibited by Islamic law, and the cartoons, originally published in a Danish newspaper and subsequently reprinted in several other countries, were labeled Islamophobic and blasphemous. They provoked protests throughout the Muslim world, some of which turned violent.
Borodavkin singled out the organization's fractured structure and inertness, lack of coordination among executive bodies and its excessive autonomy, which he said was counterproductive.
"Structures and institutions of the organization that should nurture tolerance failed to coordinate efforts to settle the cartoon crisis," Borodavkin said.
He said the organization was currently politically and organizationally helpless, and called for immediate actions to rectify the situation.
