OSCE flounders at end of summit

ASTANA, Kazakhstan (AP) — After two days of protracted wrangling, the high-profile OSCE summit fizzled out acrimoniously in the early hours Friday morning, leaving the trans-Atlantic rights and security organization adrift without a clear mandate for the future.

Inability by the delegates at the 56-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe summit to reach a clear consensus on a future agenda for the group could doom it to irrelevance.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev nonetheless praised what little consensus had been reached, calling the summit "a historic event for the entire OSCE community" that would forge new ties between Asia and the West.

In …