Russia to intercede for Azerbaijan in the OSCE

At tomorrow's meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council, Russia will raise the question of the methodology of work of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the Russian Plenipotentiary Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich reported today. On September 11 the OSCE stated that it won't monitor the parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan due to the limit on the number of observers set by the authorities of the country.

According to Lukashevich, the authorities felt that the stated number of observers was excessive and proposed their own version, taking into account the needs of all the supervisory agencies. "But ODIHR took an uncompromising position and eventually cancelled the monitoring of the elections in Azerbaijan. That is why at the next Permanent Council, I suppose, there will be a serious discussion on the methodology of work of this institution of the OSCE in the electoral sphere," RIA Novosti quotes him as saying.

As the editor-in-chief of the 'Russia in Global Affairs' magazine Fyodor Lukyanov stated in an interview with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions observes countries of the former Soviet Union with extra attention. "Several years ago, the OSCE representatives were present at the US elections. But in general, observing elections in the United States or Western Europe is a completely pointless thing. The Americans do not care what the OSCE says about their elections. They believe this is only their business and do not pay attention to the external reaction," the political scientist explained.

"That is why, in fact, the Office for Democratic Institutions deals with those countries that are still considered transitional, in other words, the post-Soviet space, the partly post-communist world, though this world is largely integrated into the EU already. And as soon as there is nothing more to be involved in, it turns out that it is necessary direct the whole work there," he stressed.

However, he drew attention to the fact that Russia will not be able to make the Office for Democratic Institutions rescind its decision. "It is not clear at all why we should do it. It seems to me that some countries, and Azerbaijan is one of them, are more inclined to ignore the opinions of external players. And if so, then they should be ignored," Fyodor Lukyanov summed up.