ARMENIA SEEKS MAJOR CURBS ON WESTERN VOTE MONITORING
By Karine Kalantarian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Oct 26 2007

Armenia has joined Russia, Belarus and four Central Asian states in
demanding serious restrictions on the often troublesome Western
monitoring of their elections, the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe confirmed on Friday. The OSCE’s
election-monitoring arm, the Warsaw-based Office for Democratic
Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), said it is bewildered by
Yerevan’s decision to back the move just months before Armenia’s
crucial presidential election.

Under proposals tabled by Russia to the OSCE’s Vienna-based governing
council on September 18, the ODIHR-led election observer missions
deployed in OSCE member states would comprise no more than 50
people. They would be barred from assessing the conduct of those
elections before the announcement of their official results. More
importantly, the Russian proposals, would enable the OSCE’s 56 member
governments to influence the content of observer reports. The Russian
initiative, backed by Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, came in advance of Russia’s December
2 parliamentary elections and presidential vote scheduled for
next March. Moscow has yet to formally invite the OSCE to monitor
the polls. Although this is not the first time Armenia endorses
Russian criticism of OSCE efforts at democracy building in the
former Soviet Union, its latest move is somewhat unexpected given
Western observers’ largely positive assessment of its May 2007
parliamentary elections. The vote was monitored by more than 200 OSCE
representatives. The previous Armenian parliamentary and presidential
elections were criticized by the OSCE as undemocratic. "We observed
elections in Armenia earlier this year and Armenia did not have
any problems with the number of our observers and their findings,"
ODIHR spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir told RFE/RL. "So we don’t see
any good reason why Armenia would support such a proposal now."

Gunnarsdottir said the head of the ODIHR, Christian Strohal, raised
the issue with Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian and other Armenian
official during a visit to Yerevan earlier this week. Official Armenian
sources made no mention of this, saying only that Strohal discussed
preparations for the upcoming presidential elections.

Echoing arguments made by Russian officials, a spokesman for the
Armenian Foreign Ministry said Yerevan supports the proposed
restrictions on OSCE vote monitoring "in the light of ongoing
reforms of the OSCE." "Armenia is actively involved in the process
of reforms and believes it is important that the organization become
more representative, transparent and equal for everyone," Vladimir
Karapetian told RFE/RL. The United States criticized the Russian
proposals on Thursday. "The U.S. would not want to see ODIHR’s
effectiveness weakened under the guise of ‘reform,"’ said Kyle
Scott, deputy chief of the U.S. mission to the OSCE. "The Russian
proposals do nothing to strengthen its work." "From the point of
view of an election observer, it is not a good proposal and flies in
the face of what we have been doing for the last ten years," agreed
Gunnarsdottir. "I don’t really see why there is a need to limit the
number of observers and their ability to speak about their findings."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress