OSCE Invented Excuses To Scrap Observers

`By way of an excuse for this,invented references to alleged difficulties in obtaining Russian visas have been put forward,`- ministry said.

Russia's Foreign Ministry reacted angrily to a decision by Europe's main election watchdog to cancel monitoring of a Dec. 2 parliamentary vote, accusing it of inventing reasons to pull out.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's ODIHR arm, which runs election observation missions, scrapped plans to send observers for the vote on Friday, citing obstruction by the Russian authorities including a failure to issue observers with entry visas.

"By way of an excuse for this (cancelling the observation mission), invented references to alleged difficulties in obtaining Russian visas have been put forward," the ministry said in a statement.

"In actual fact, if something got in the way of ODIHR observers coming to Russia, then it was muddle inside that organisation itself and the disdainful actions of its leadership, which has not paid attention to generally-accepted procedures." The statement said the OSCE agreements to which Russia was a signatory only required member states to invite observers, and Moscow had fulfilled that commitment. It said ODIHR was making up rules not set out in those agreements.

"It seems that ODIHR assumes that there is nothing in the world apart from the schemes it has invented, and they interpret anything else as some kind of 'restrictions'."

"Attempts to force (OSCE states) to subordinate themselves to rules that they have never signed up to look, frankly, absurd," said the statement.