RUSSIA OPPOSES OSCE MEMBER STATES' STRIVING TO CONTROL ELECTIONS

VIENNA, February 25 (RIA Novosti, Borislav Pechnikov) - Russia comes out against the striving of a number of states - members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to become controllers of elections at different levels, prom the presidential to the municipal ones.

Speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov, who heads the Russian parliamentary delegation at the 4th session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly which is being held in the Austrian capital, expressed this opinion in the interview he gave to RIA Novosti in Vienna on Friday.

According to him, "such a situation leads to emasculation of the OSCE, and for this reason it is necessary to ensure equality of approaches and criteria in monitoring elections and estimating these elections."

As Mr. Gryzlov said, "the planned character and equality of monitoring elections lie in the idea that the OSCE observers must carry out this monitoring not mainly in the CIS countries or in the Balkans but in such states as, for instance, Great Britain, France or Finland."

In the State Duma speaker's opinion, misbalance is visible in the OSCE's work, and the excessive concentration of efforts on the humanitarian direction is felt, this being the most perceptible in the case of the CIS states."

He stressed that "it is necessary to get rid as soon as possible of the practice of 'double standards and politicized assessments of the election processes in the OSCE countries.'"

Mr. Gryzlov, having touched upon the question of the OSCE budget, said, "The budget has not been approved yet, since it must be approved on the basis of the principle of consensus which does not exist among the Organization member countries now. Furthermore, we come out for changing the scale of pay now existing in the OSCE. The scale of pay, used in the UN, must be taken as the basis."

"We want the OSCE's budget money to be spent specifically on the programs proposed by Russia, for instance,on holding a seminar on military concepts, on a conference on the questions of intensifying the struggle against international terrorism," the speaker of the State Duma stated.

"Despite the fact that a number of countries in the OSCE oppose the practice of taking decisions in the Organization on the consensus principle, Russia will insist on observance of this principle," Mr. Gryzlov stated.