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Excerpts from the JRL E-Mail Community :: Founded and Edited by David Johnson
#8 - JRL 2007-228 - JRL Home
New Rules Will Not Hamper Observer Mission In Russia

MOSCOW. Nov 1 (Interfax) - The Federation Council disagrees with the OSCE Bureau for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (BDIHR) that Russian authorities are attempting to impose limitations on the international observers meant to monitor parliamentary elections in Russia.

"There is hardly anything surprising in the decision of Russia. OSCE officials are forgetting that they can act on the territory of a sovereign state only within the laws of that sovereign state," Federation Council Constitutional Legislation Committee head Yuri Sharandin said.

"The OSCE has developed methods that are meant to have precedence on the laws of a sovereign state," Sharandin said. "I think my OSCE colleagues should return to earth and realize that their role is not to forge others' destinies or that of a court passing down a verdict. They are only observers," Sharandin said.

Federation Council CIS Committee head Vadim Gustov told Interfax that the United Kingdom, for instance, does not invite foreign observers to monitor elections in the UK.

"Recently Poland also deemed unnecessary to invite OSCE observers, and nobody raised the issue of lack of democracy or restrictions," Gustov said.

Gustov called on the OSCE not to "blow the mater out of proportion and not to engage in neat picking regarding Russia," Gustov said.

Gustov also said that "Russia's Central Election Commission is creating all the necessary conditions for the work of international observers, but they cannot require special treatment.