Moscow sees ‘sabotage’ by OSCE office

Moscow sees ‘sabotage’ by OSCE office

By Isabel Gorst in Moscow

Published: February 2 2008 03:28 | Last updated: February 2 2008 03:28

Russia’s foreign ministry has accused the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe of attempting to sabotage its plans for monitoring the presidential election amid an escalating row which threatens to prevent the watchdog from observing the upcoming poll.

The OSCE has protested that Russia has invited too few observers for too short a time to monitor the poll on March 2, which President Vladimir Putin’s chosen successor is expected to win.

“The OSCE is continuing openly to sabotage our proposals for election monitoring,” Sergei Ryabkov, the director of the foreign ministry’s department for European co-operation, said at a press briefing on Friday.

His outburst came two days after the OSCE warned it would abandon plans to monitor the presidential election unless Russia allowed its observers to start work next week.

The OSCE says that Moscow’s refusal to allow monitors to arrive in Russia before February 28, just three days before the poll, will preclude any “any kind of meaningful observation” of the election. Russia’s decision to limit to 70 the number of OSCE observers permitted to monitor the election, compared with the 387 involved in the last presidential poll in 2004, will also weaken the mission, it says.

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The OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (Odihr) said it would send two representatives to Moscow on Monday to discuss monitoring plans with Russia’s central election commission in an attempt to defuse the row.

The OSCE abandoned plans to monitor last December’s parliamentary elections citing “unprecedented restrictions” on its work, including limits on observer numbers and visa delays.

An Odihr spokesman said the Russian restrictions challenged the OSCE’s mandate to observe elections: “Russia is one of the countries that supported the mandate. This is a unilateral reinterpretation of Russians’ commitment to the OSCE. No other OSCE country has ever done this.”

Russian officials insist they are complying with OSCE standards. Mr Ryabkov said: “We will fulfil our obligations to the very end, but we are not over-fulfilling them.”

● The widow and son of Serbian autocrat Slobodan Milosevic were granted refugee status nearly two years ago by Russia because of a threat to their lives in Serbia, Russia’s migration service said on Friday, Reuters reports.

Serbia has issued a warrant for the arrest of Mirjana Markovic on fraud charges. She fled Serbia for Russia in 2003 during a wave of arrests that followed the assassination of Zoran Djindjic, the reformist prime minister. She made her home in central Moscow but has kept away from reporters.

A spokesman for Russia’s Federal Migration Service said Markovic and her son, Marko Milosevic, had been granted refugee status in accordance with United Nations and Russian rules on refugees.