MOSCOW, December 6 (RIA Novosti) - The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) should establish general criteria for evaluating elections in its member countries, a senior Russian parliamentarian said Tuesday.
Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the State Duma (lower chamber) international affairs committee, said that the criteria used by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and observer missions "[was] becoming more unclear."
"It seems that the evaluation of these, or those, elections depends not on the way they are really held but on the OSCE assessment of the leadership and political regime existing in this or that member country," Kosachev said, commenting on the OSCE's judgment of the recent presidential elections in Kazakhstan that ended in the landslide victory of incumbent President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
OSCE observers claimed that the Kazakh elections did not comply with the organization's standards, he added.
However, observers from other organizations, including the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, as well as opposition candidates acknowledged that the Kazakh elections complied with general standards, Kosachev said.
According to the parliamentarian, Russia has proposed adopting a single European convention to establish common standards of evaluation for elections.
But he said there had been no progress given the European Union's negative attitude toward the convention.
"We will not regard the conclusions of OSCE missions as unbiased until the OSCE proposes recommendations to the organization's member states on the introduction of common election standards and the involvement of international observers," Kosachev said.
