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#17 - JRL 9068 - JRL Home
RUSSIA FOR WORKING OUT SYSTEM OF OBJECTIVE ELECTION ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

VIENNA, February 24 (RIA Novosti's Borislav Pechnikov) - Greater trust in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will depend on its participation in the observation of elections both in countries with "new democracies" and with old democratic traditions. Russian State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov announced this at the 4th winter session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly which opened in Vienna on Thursday.

"In this connection, we call on the OSCE to show a more balanced-out and objective approach to the observation elections on the entire space of its activities," the State Duma speaker noted.

In his opinion, "parliamentarians could provide the required assistance to the OSCE specialized body, Bureau for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, in collecting information and making comparative analysis of election legislation in the member states for specifying election appraisal criteria and ruling out the very possibility of premeditated, politically biased conclusions by observers".

"The Sofia conference of the OSCE Council of Ministers last December failed to adopt a decision on the essential question of improving the practice of appraising election processes in the OSCE region. The corresponding monitoring by observation missions of the Bureau for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and OSCE Parliamentary Assembly last year, especially in the CIS states, evoked unfavorable criticism," Boris Gryzlov stressed.

"Russia comes for the development of an OSCE system of objective criteria to assess elections. If not, such monitoring becomes politicized and turns into a tool for manipulations," he noted.

"An important role here is to be played by parliamentarians of our countries. In this connection, thought should be given to the holding of an interparliamentary forum of organizations having experience of election monitoring with inviting to it representatives of the Bureau for comparing approaches and exchanging information so as to raise monitoring to a qualitatively new level," Mr. Gryzlov said.