Russia invites more observers as OSCE snubs poll
Published: 19 November, 2007, 14:32
Russia’s lower house, the State Duma, is appealing for more election observers to monitor December’s parliamentary poll. It’s sent 75 invitations to various parliamentary organisations.
The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights announced last week that it was not sending observers to Russia.
Seventy five more invitations have been sent to the PACE, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly.
The latest move from the State Duma will bring the number of monitors back up to around 300.
“The overall number of international observers, in spite of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights refusal to send its delegation, will even increase a little, which means that the quality of international monitoring at Russia's election will be high. We expect competent and objective work and we have nothing to hide,” Konstantin Kosachev, the Head of the State Duma Committee for Foreign Affairs, said.
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