ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- President Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Monday of pushing the OSCE not to send observers to monitor Russian parliamentary elections next week. The organization denied the claim.
Putin blamed Washington for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's decision not to send observers to monitor Russia's Dec. 2 parliamentary elections. "According to the information we have, once again this was done at the advice of the U.S. State Department," he said.
"We will take this into account in our relations with that country," he warned in comments that reflected the growing chill between Moscow and Washington and highlighted his threat to brook no U.S. criticism of Russia's vote.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow said it had no immediate comment on Putin's allegations.
The Kremlin has mounted a major campaign to produce a crushing victory for the dominant United Russia party in Dec. 2 -- perhaps to help secure Putin's grip on power even after he steps down as president next year.
Putin is constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term. On Monday, Russia's upper parliament house formally the presidential vote for March 2.
The OSCE election monitoring office said Nov. 16 that it would not send a mission to observe the vote, saying Moscow failed to issue the visas in time and had created other obstacles. Russia also said it would allow the OSCE to send only 70 observers -- far fewer than for previous elections.
Putin said the OSCE's refusal to send observers was aimed at casting doubt on the legitimacy of the vote.
"Their goal clearly is to make elections look illegitimate, but they won't succeed," Putin said at a meeting sponsored by United Russia.
A spokeswoman for the OSCE's monitoring arm, Urdur Gunnarsdottir, called Putin's accusations "nonsense."
"This decision was a decision that was only made based on the fact that we were not receiving any visas and were unable to do a meaningful observation of the election," she said from Zagreb, Croatia. "It was not made on the recommendation or coordinated with any government, and certainly not with the U.S. government."
Gunnarsdottir said the decision was made by the director of the OSCE's Warsaw-based Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in consultation with the organization's elections experts.
"These are people who have organized over 150 election observations, so they by now know what they are able to do and not able to do, when it is no longer possible for us to do a proper observation," she said.
The U.S. State Department has criticized Russia's restrictions on foreign observers, saying Moscow had deliberately hindered the OSCE's ability to send observers.
The OSCE -- which includes the United States, Canada, European countries and ex-Soviet republics -- is widely regarded in the West as the most authoritative assessor of whether elections are conducted in line with democratic principles.
Its observers have criticized several votes in Russia and some other ex-Soviet republics, and its assessments were seen as key factors in encouraging massive protests in Georgia and Ukraine that powered Western-oriented leaders into office.
Russia and some allies say the OSCE's election monitoring is biased and that it tacitly supports pro-Western opposition forces.
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
