OSCE TO START ARMENIAN VOTE MONITORING IN MID-MARCH
By Ruben Meloyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Feb 22 2007

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe plans to
start next month observing preparations for and conduct of Armenia’s
May 12 parliamentary elections, the OSCE’s vote-monitoring arm said
on Thursday.

The findings of OSCE observers will be crucial for the domestic and
international legitimacy of the polls which Western powers say will
put the Armenian leadership’s democratic credentials to the greatest
test yet. Official Yerevan has already formally asked the Warsaw-based
Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to monitor
the entire electoral process.

The ODIHR spokeswoman, Urdur Gunnarsdottir, told RFE/RL that the
monitoring mission is due to get underway in late March with the
deployment in Yerevan of a "core team" of at least a dozen Western
election experts and 24 long-term observers.

"We hope that the first observers will be there around mid-March,"
Gunnarsdottir said. "That is the plan now. And the long-term observers
will be arriving a week later. Before the end of March we should have
a full long-term mission in place."

She added that the ODIHR will also ask OSCE member states to send in
some 300 short-term observers that will visit polling stations across
Armenia on voting day and watch the counting and tabulation of ballots.

The organization dispatched a similar number of observers, most of
them from Western Europe and the United States, during the previous
Armenian presidential and parliamentary elections. The elections were
judged to have failed to meet democratic standards due to serious fraud
reported by those observers. The Armenian authorities disagreed with
their critical assessments, saying that the reported irregularities
did not significantly affect vote results.

A Armenian newspaper report claimed last week that President
Robert Kocharian has told Western diplomats in Yerevan that the OSCE
monitoring mission should not be headed by U.S. or British officials,
as has been the case until now. Kocharian allegedly suggested that
the job be given to a representative of France or Russia, countries
that have been far less critical of his administration’s electoral
record. According to Gunnarsdottir, the mission chief has not yet
been selected by the OSCE.

The ODIHR director, Christian Strohal, visited Armenia last month to
discuss preparations for the upcoming polls with Kocharian and other
senior Armenian officials. Shortly afterwards the ODIHR dispatched a
"needs assessment mission" that looked into those preparations and
the overall pre-election situation in the country in greater detail.

"The authorities and other interlocutors met by [the Needs Assessment
Mission] acknowledged problems with past elections and assured that
the upcoming will be conducted in line with OSCE commitments and
other international standards," mission members said in a reported
released on February 15.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress