West likely to block idea of unified election monitoring rules - newspaper
MOSCOW. Dec 7 (Interfax) - The initiative of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan to elaborate common rules of international election monitoring made at the Thursday meeting of the OSCE Council of Foreign Ministers in Dublin has no prospect, Kommersant reported on Friday.
"The initiative is likely to be blocked: the U.S. and a number of EU member countries feel rather skeptical about it," the newspaper said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the authors. She accused Belarus and Kazakhstan of pressure on civil society and the media, the newspaper said.
Criticism of Russia focused on the NGO law and the mandatory registration of organizations, which had foreign sponsors, as "foreign agents."
A final decision on the proposal will be made on Friday, the newspaper said.
The Dublin session confirmed that Russia and the West had different ideas about the OSCE future.
Russia would like the OSCE to concentrate on security and economic affairs instead of human rights, the newspaper said.
"Only one word in the OSCE acronym is in touch with the reality: that word is Europe. There is no organization because the OSCE has no charter. It does not manage to ensure security. And cooperation is miserable," a source in the Russian delegation told the newspaper.
Due to its "unbalanced and politicized" approach the OSCE is losing efficiency, Kommersant stressed.
Meanwhile, Western countries, among them the U.S., laid their claims to the organization at the Dublin session.
"Yet they proposed an improvement in a totally different way, i.e. enhancement of the human rights subject," the newspaper said.