OSCE pledges unbiased monitoring of elections

OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights Director Janez Lenarcic is confident that international observers monitoring the forthcoming presidential run-off election in Kazakhstan will be absolutely unbiased, Interfax Kazakhstan quoted him as saying. Mr. Lenarcic made this statement while meeting with Kazakhstan Senate Speaker Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev in Vienna. According to Mr. Lenarcic, the organization has a keen interest in how the election will be administered. He emphasized that the observers would fully stick to international norms and principles. In his turn, Mr. Tokayev expressed hope that the cooperation between ODIHR and Kazakhstan would be successful through to the election itself. Earlier it had been announced that a total of 800 observers of the CIS and the OSCE would be monitoring the elections.