Ukraine's electoral commission has registered 1,583 foreign observers who will monitor the January 17 presidential election, Kyiv Post reported Saturday.
On Friday, the commission registered 578 international official observers, including three from Belarus, four from Estonia, two from Hungary, eight from the Interparliamentary Assembly of the CIS member-states, 526 from the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO) and 38 from For Free and Fair Elections, an international public organization promoting electoral technologies, the paper said.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, herself a candidate for president, promised on Thursday to ensure Ukraine's presidential election is fair and transparent.
At a meeting with Heidi Tagliavini, the chairman of the OSCE election monitoring mission in Ukraine, Tymoshenko said she would do everything necessary so that the January 17 vote is carried out in accordance with European standards.
The final opinion polls, which under Ukrainian law are published two weeks before the election, showed Tymoshenko running second to Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych among the 18 candidates.
Yanukovych won a runoff against Viktor Yushchenko in 2004, but the vote was ruled illegitimate and Yushchenko was elected president in the re-run.
KIEV, January 9 (RIA Novosti)
