| JRL HOME | SUPPORT | SUBSCRIBE | RESEARCH & ANALYTICAL SUPPLEMENT | |
Old Saint Basil's Cathedral in MoscowJohnson's Russia List title and scenes of Saint Petersburg
Excerpts from the JRL E-Mail Community :: Founded and Edited by David Johnson
#10 - JRL 2007-223 - JRL Home
Interfax
October 26, 2007
Russia will define monitoring order for OSCE observers itself - Borodavkin

Russia will invite observers of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OHIHR) to the State Duma elections, but it reserves the right to decide on the modalities of the monitoring itself, Russian Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexei Borodavkin said in an interview with Interfax on Friday.

"As to our elections, we will fully live up to our commitments. They state that we should invite international observers. That is all," Borodavkin said.

"Our commitments do not concern the way the monitoring process will be organized" or "monitoring modalities" in other words, the diplomat said. "The Russian side has the right to decide on them itself, and we will do this. Of course, we will inform ODIHR on issue on time," he said.

The diplomat also said that Russia has submitted draft regulations for OSCE/ODIHR to the organization.

"Co-authored with other OSCE member states, a document called Basic Principles of ODIHR Monitoring of Nationwide Elections has been proposed by Russia to the organization for consideration," Borodavkin said.

The ODIHR is expected to make a decision at the OSCE Council of Foreign Ministers in Madrid on November 29-30, the diplomat said.

Meanwhile, several Western media outlets reported earlier that Russia had confidentially presented the proposal at the OSCE headquarters in Vienna in an effort to reduce the number of international observers on the territory of the former Soviet Union.

"This is a normal draft resolution of the upcoming meeting of the OSCE Council of Foreign Ministers, and it can be found on the OSCE's website. There are no secrets here," Borodavkin said commenting on the reports.

"We and the countries that submitted the draft document to the OSCE have serious concerns about how and on what basis ODIHR monitors elections," he said.

"No monitoring modalities have been approved by the OSCE's collective bodies. By submitting our document, we want to rectify this situation," the diplomat said. ODIHR should be guided by "a clear mandate, clear rules, to be defined by OSCE member states," he said.

Moscow has "complaints regarding ODIHR's political, organizational and staff aspects," Borodavkin said. "They are related to the fact that instead of giving technical assessments of how the elections were held, ODIHR observers often issue political assessments, which sometimes adversely affect the internal political stability of the countries where monitoring is being conducted," he said.

"Another aspect we are unhappy with is that the monitoring of elections is held mainly in countries east of Vienna. That is, the focus is on post-Soviet countries. Although there are plenty of violations of election rules in countries west of Vienna as well," Borodavkin said.

Russia is also unhappy with several organizational and staff aspects of ODIHR's work. "The selection of heads of observer missions is absolutely nontransparent. This is being done behind closed doors by ODIHR itself. Never once throughout the whole history of ODIHR has its observer mission been led by a representative, say, of a CIS country," the diplomat said.