"As a matter of course, the dispatching of monitors would have to come at the request of the country in question or, alternatively, with a mandate from the appropriate UN legislative body", the source said on Friday.
Earlier on Friday, former Belarusian presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya called on the United Nations to deploy a monitoring mission in Belarus to observe the ongoing protests in the country.
The source said that the UN Security Council, the Human Rights Council, and the UN General Assembly could qualify as such legislative bodies.
United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric declined to comment when asked about Tikhanovskaya’s remarks.
The political opposition has organized protests in Belarus after the country’s presidential election in which President Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected for a sixth term. While electoral authorities maintain that Lukashenko won more than 80 percent of the vote, the opposition insists that its candidate, Tikhanovskaya, won the election.
