Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.11
By Elmira Tariverdiyeva - Trend:
OSCE's refusal to observe the parliamentary election in Azerbaijan is a vivid example of its biased attitude, Russian Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said in an interview with Kommersant newspaper.
Boycott of the election in Azerbaijan is absolutely unacceptable and it shows that the OSCE is not ready to hold a dialogue, according to Lukashevich.
"OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) refused to hold a dialogue only because the Azerbaijani side proposed to reduce the number of its observers in the election," he said.
This is while in recent three years, the ODIHR has sent almost 7,000 observers to CIS countries and little more than 200 to the EU countries, Lukashevich added.
Further, he noted that aside from the consolidated budget approved by all states, ODIHR implements a number of extra-budgetary projects, especially in the electoral sphere.
That's to say, in fact, it works for money provided additionally by foreign donors, primarily the western countries led by the US, Lukashevich said.
"Currently, ODIHR implements tens of such extra-budgetary projects valued at several tens of millions of euros," he said. "The goal of these sponsors is quite obvious. Не, who pays the piper, calls the tune."
Earlier, during the press conference in Moscow, OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier expressed regret that no agreement was reached on sending the ODIHR observation mission to Azerbaijan's parliamentary election.
Azerbaijan held parliamentary election Nov. 1. As many as 767 candidates ran for 125 seats in the country's parliament. The election was monitored by 503 international observers from 40 organizations and over 66,000 local observers.
Edited by SI