U.S. CAUTIOUS IN WELCOMING ARMENIAN POLL CONDUCT
By Emil Danielyan
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
May 15 2007
The United States has said Armenia’s parliamentary elections were a
"step in the right direction," but unlike Western election observers,
stopped short of describing them as largely democratic.
"All and all, I think this is an improvement over past elections;
though certainly if you look at what the observers said, it did not
fully meet international standards," Tome Casey, a spokesman for the
State Department told a news briefing in Washington on Monday.
In a preliminary report released on Sunday, the 400-strong monitoring
mission led by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe said the vote was conducted "largely in accordance with
international standards for democratic elections." It was the most
positive assessment of Armenian elections ever made by the OSCE.
The European Union rushed to praise the Armenian authorities’
conduct of the polls. The German government, the current holder
the EU’s rotating presidency, said they were "on the whole" free
and fair. In a separate statement, the bloc’s foreign policy chief,
Javier Solana, said Armenians "demonstrated greater political maturity
trough these elections" and sent a "positive signal to other countries
in the region."
The U.S. took a more cautious position, with Casey urging the
authorities in Yerevan to "aggressively investigate allegations that
are there of electoral wrongdoing and prosecute people in accordance
with Armenian law." In a separate statement posted on its website on
Tuesday, the U.S. embassy in Armenia said the alleged fraud may have
influenced the official vote results that gave a landslide victory
to the governing Republican Party of Armenia (HHK).
"Part of the election process is a careful consideration of all
issues raised in connection with the election, including several
serious allegations of fraud or intimidation which may have affected
the outcome of some of the races," the statement said. It also noted
that long-term OSCE observers are currently verifying figures reported
by the Central Election Commission.
Tone Tingsgaard, a top member of the observer mission representing the
OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly, insisted on Sunday that irregularities
reported by the Western monitors were not serious enough to affect
the election outcome.