Benedikt Haller: “It’d be logical if Russia sent its observers to the OSCE mission”

• 26.08.2010, 12:13

Representatives of the OSCE are ready to start work just after the date for the presidential elections in Belarus is set.

Benedikt Haller, the head of the OSCE Office in Minsk, hopes the organization will receive an invitation to observe the presidential elections in Belarus. He said this in an interview to BelaPAN on August 25.

Haller also expressed a hope that the organization would have an opportunity to carry out professional observation, both long-term and short-term.

According to him, representatives of the OSCE are ready to start their activity just after the date for the presidential elections in Belarus is announced. “I am sure out colleagues from the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the OSCE are morally ready to start work, too, and are waiting for the election date to be confirmed. We’ll begin making concrete plans, determine places of work and people’s functions after the date is announced. We are making preliminary plans, we are waiting now,” Haller said.

What to the information by the Russian media that Russian president’s aide Sergey Prihodko already gave an order to start negotiations with the ODIHR on joint monitoring the forthcoming presidential elections in Belarus, Haller noted: “Earlier, Russian observers represented the CIS in observation missions. It would be logical, if Russia, being a member of the OSCE, sent its observers to the OSCE mission.”

Haller also noted that Russian observers and OSCE monitors had different estimations of the elections results. “Though they shouldn’t be different at least because professional monitoring of elections is carried out in accordance with special methods and dictated by the rules of the genre,” Haller said.