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On Nov. 6, in a long expository article, The New York Times informed us that, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Tbilisi had (a) initiated the hostilities and (b) done so with indiscriminate bombing of the South Ossetian capital without regard to civilian casualties--despite Georgian claims to the contrary. All sides consider the OSCE to be a highly dependable, impartial, monitoring body with long experience in the region. Whatever the BBC is pretending to report there, their subtext sneaks through loud and clear--Georgia invaded first. If Georgia invaded first, Russia was provoked, Russia could not...

Just so you people know, other countries are monitoring our elections thanks to an invitation by our Ambassador for limited observation, meaning they cannot interfere: WASHINGTON, 10 October 2008 - The OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) today opened a limited election observation mission to monitor the 4 November elections in the United States of America. ... The mission will assess the upcoming elections in the context of OSCE commitments and other international standards for democratic elections, as well as national legislation. The observers will focus mainly on federal legislation and its implementation, election reform issues, the...

Spiegel: OSCE observers fault Georgians in conflict Europe News Aug 30, 2008, 9:52 GMT Hamburg - European observers have faulted Georgia in this month's Caucasus conflict, saying it made elaborate plans to seize South Ossetia, according to the German news magazine Der Spiegel on Saturday. In a report to appear in its Monday edition, it said officials of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had said acts by the Georgian government had contributed to the outbreak of the crisis with Russia. Spiegel said OSCE military observers in the Caucasus had described preparations by Georgia to move into...

<p>TSKHINVALI, Georgia, Aug. 16 -- Nine days ago, late in the afternoon of Aug. 7, Georgian tanks, artillery and infantry began moving out of bases in Georgia and toward South Ossetia, a zone long held by separatists who are backed by Moscow.</p>

VIENNA, Austria: Russian and Georgian officials at a leading European security organized sparred Friday over who is to blame for the bloodshed in the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia. Georgia's ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Victor Dolidze, accused Russia of "clear, open, military aggression from one OSCE country to another — its neighbor, unfortunately."But Vladimir Voronkov, Russia's top delegate to the Vienna-based body, denied any Russian military involvement, saying that just 500 Russian peacekeepers were in the province. "I can't speak about any Russian forces present: This is a very obvious trick of the Georgian side to...

'The time has come [for Arab states] to cease using international forums to vilify Israel and to publicly condemn those forces of hatred and violence that, ultimately, undermine everything they stand for," Deputy Foreign Minister Majallie Whbee, a Druse, said, rather impolitely, on Tuesday. Whbee's point was important not because he is not Jewish - the Arabs he addressed will no doubt write him off anyway as a loyal Israeli who holds a lieutenant-colonel's rank in the IDF - but because his audience was a group of European diplomats who were as embarrassed as Israel at the latest sign that...

Moscow (26 November) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of attempting to discredit next Sunday's parliamentary elections by pressuring international observers to boycott the election. Earlier this month, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe called off the observer mission due to Moscow's lack of cooperation, particularly over the issuing of visas. President Putin says this is an excuse and that Washington told them not to come. The US has expressed its concern about the crackdown on opposition protests. Riot police broke up anti-Kremlin demonstrations in Moscow and Saint Petersburg at the weekend and some...

CORDOBA, Spain (AFP) — Islamophobia gathered pace in the West with the end of the Cold War, long before the September 11, 2001 attacks against the US, participants at a two-day OSCE conference that began in Spain Tuesday said. "After the end of the Cold War, certain people took Muslims and Islam to be the new scapegoat and enemy," Mustapha Cherif, an expert on Islam at the University of Algiers, told AFP on the sidelines of the gathering. "But after the senseless act of September 11, this has been amplified," added Cherif, who is known for his commitment to battling...

Poland Rejects OSCE Observers for Upcoming Vote Poland said on Friday it didnt want observers from Europes main security watchdog to monitor its Oct. 21 parliamentary election. Poland said on Friday it didn't want observers from Europe's main security watchdog to monitor its Oct. 21 parliamentary election because it was a democracy, and added the OSCE shouldn't have asked it to invite them. Foreign ministry spokesman Robert Szaniawski said Poland was a solid democracy and added that the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) made a "faux pas" by asking Warsaw to invite observers to ensure the vote...

U.S. Defense Department / ReutersPresident Vladimir Putin and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates taking their seats at the opening of a security conference in Munich on Saturday. President Vladmir Putin accused the United States of carrying out a reckless and dangerous foreign policy, in a blistering speech that some U.S. politicians likened to Cold War rhetoric.Senior Russian officials, however, insisted that honesty and openness -- not hostility -- were behind Putin's address to an international security conference in Munich on Saturday. Political analysts expressed doubt that the remarks would cast a chill on U.S.-Russia relations.Putin, issuing perhaps his harshest...

The problem of withdrawal of Russian armed forces and armament from the territory of the republic remains a priority of OSCE mission in Moldavia, Head of OSCE mission to Republic of Moldova Luis O’Neill stated Sep 20 at a press conference in Chisinau, REGNUM correspondent reports. “Commitments undertaken by the Russian Federation at the OSCE summit in Istanbul remain in force, and Mission is ready to exert help to Russia in this regard and insists that the process is continued.” According to O’Neill, 20,000 tons of ammunitions can be evacuated in six months, given the necessary political will is available."...

Moldova termed as illegal a referendum in the Trans-Dniester region whose results showed a majority of the people there supported the region's eventual union with Russia, reports from the Moldovan capital Chisinau said on Sunday. Moldova's presidential office said Moldova would not accept the results of the "illegitimate" referendum, which was held earlier Sunday. According to Russia's Itar-Tass news agency, by 17:00 local time, preliminary results had shown that over 90 percent of the voters favored leaving Moldova and joining Russia. Moldovan Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev told Romania's press that he expected the Russian government would not accept the results...

A new book by David Horowitz and Richard Poe has enraged the Left and alarmed many conservatives. It exposes the machinations of a radical clique working at the highest levels of government and finance to undermine American power. That book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. It hit the New York Times bestseller list in its first week in print. Here to tell us about The Shadow Partyis co-author Richard Poe, our esteemed colleague at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, where he serves as director of research. Mr....

Released : Sunday, July 02, 2006 1:18 PM TBILISI, Georgia-Italian police arrested a Georgian man working for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for allegedly trying to smuggle 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of heroin in Italy, the Foreign Ministry said Sunday. The ministry did not say in its statement exactly when Zurab Lomashvili was arrested, but Italian newspaper L'Espresso said Lomashvili was driving in the seaside city of Pescara on June 24 when financial police, suspicious of his Macedonian number plate, ordered him to stop and searched the car. Authorities then took the car to a police mechanic...

In this exclusive interview with one of Canada’s most experienced police detectives, Stu Kellock, readers get the inside story of how UN investigators in Kosovo sought to crack down on criminals and terrorists – but were systematically stopped, because of the perceived need to safeguard the interests of the Western political elite and their local protégés. Stu Kellock, the former head of UNMIK’s Regional Serious Crime Unit in Pristina, provides an extraordinary insider’s perspective on the difficult and oftentimes dangerous work of investigating organized crime in Kosovo. This article, which contains several minor bombshells regarding the interlinked topics of organized...

Col. Vlatko Vukovic, the commander of the 2nd Motorized Battalion of the 549th Motorized Brigade of the Yugoslav Army, resumed his testimony at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Thursday. The witness exhibited several documents including his unit’s logbook, daily reports, combat reports, and his unit’s war diary. These documents are contemporaneous, and show what orders the unit was given, and what the unit did from hour to hour during the entire duration of the Kosovo war. The documents show that the unit followed the orders it was given and that did not engage in any of the crimes alleged...

Election Results Yesterday, the unrecognized Pridnestrovie Moldavia Republic (PMR) was electing deputies of Supreme Council. The Sunday voting went without participation of international observers. Official Moldavian authorities call the election another farce. However, it did not faze the leadership of Pridnestrovie. The regime of Igor Smirnov was able to prevent an “orange revolution” from happening and kept the power. It means Moscow should lay off the worries for the next five years – it will not be let out of Pridnestrovie. “Yes” The authorities made public transportation free for the day of the elections. From early morning speakers were transmitting...

In Ljubljana, quarrels over election monitoring and the implementation of earlier commitments overshadow the OSCE’s annual ministerial meeting. LJUBLJANA, Slovenia | It should have been a year of renewal for the OSCE under Slovenian chairmanship. But the modest steps towards a refocusing of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe achieved this year were overshadowed by the clash of incompatible and inflexible visions held by Russia and the United States. The dispute came to a head at the 5-6 December ministerial summit in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana. AGREEING TO DISAGREE The main disagreements were over Russia’s slow troop withdrawal from...

Ljubljana, 6 December (RFE/RL) -- The United States has told Moscow that it will not sign a new treaty on conventional military forces until Russia withdraws all its troops and equipment from separatist republics in Georgia and Moldova. The U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, Nicholas Burns, said today at a meeting of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana that it was impossible to reconcile the continued presence of Russian troops with the arms treaty. "A basic principle of the CFE (Conventional Forces Europe) Treaty is the right of sovereign states...

U.S. Rejects Russian Attacks On OSCE Ljubljana, 5 December 2005 (RFE/RL) U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns rejected today Russian attacks on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) election observers, saying they were the "gold standard worldwide in election monitoring." Burns, addressing the two-day ministerial conference of the OSCE in Ljubljana, said the United States is convinced the OSCE "is not broken" and that any reform must result in "strengthening, not weakening" the organization. Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attacked the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), which monitors elections, saying it had...

SUKHUMI, September 30 (RIA Novosti) - The president of Abkhazia, a self-proclaimed independent republic on Georgian territory, said he would not agree to the deployment of U.S. and EU peacekeeping forces in the region. "The CIS peacekeeping troops were sent to the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict zone in line with the May 14, 1994 agreement on a ceasefire and the disengagement of forces," Sergei Bagapsh said, responding to a proposal by Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to involve the United States and the European Union in the peacemaking process. "Abkhazia does not plan on making any amendments to the document." "No other countries...

Another sign indicating that the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), founded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is disintegrating emerged in the Commonwealth summit held at Kazan. Turkmenistan is preparing to leave the 15 year old CIS by changing its status. Georgian President Mihail Saakashvili revealed that in the last hours of the summit, Turkmenistan government communicated its request for a change in its CIS permanent membership status. In the case that Turkmenistan breaks away from the CIS, it will be the first time since the three Baltic republics that a Central Asian Soviet will have obtained full independence....

Kyrgyz poll hailed as 'progress' Kyrgyzstan's presidential poll showed "tangible progress" in democratic standards, foreign monitors concluded. A statement by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said Sunday's election was rated either "good" or "very good". Acting Kyrgyz leader Kurmanbek Bakiev scored a landslide victory in the poll, winning 89% of the votes. In his first post-election comments, Mr Bakiev said it was time to review the need for a US airbase in his country. American-led forces have been stationed at a base near the capital Bishkek since 2001, to support military operations in nearby Afghanistan. "Afghanistan...

This isn't the first time we've written about a Senate tradition called the "hold," by which an individual Senator can delay indefinitely a Presidential nomination. It's an abuse of the Constitution's advice-and-consent power, and the Senate would be better off without it. This being a Republican administration, most of the current abusers are Democrats, who have announced holds on the head of the Food and Drug Administration, the Deputy Secretary of Interior, a Treasury Undersecretary and an Assistant Secretary of Defense, among other nominees. But sometimes Republicans get in on the bad behavior, and Kansas Senator Sam Brownback is now...

WASHINGTON, May 30 (JTA) — Standardizing the monitoring of anti-Semitism, improving Holocaust education and combating anti-Jewish bigotry in media coverage of Israel are priorities of a top European official on anti-Semitism. In a quick U.S. visit last week, Gert Weisskirchen met with Jewish leaders to reassure them of the seriousness of his efforts to fulfill goals that the 55-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe set at its anti-Semitism conferences during the past two years. Weisskirchen, who also is the foreign policy spokesman for the ruling Social Democrats in the German Bundestag, told JTA that his immediate priority...

Racak was a battle with the KLA This time there's video-taped proof! Judge Marinkovic Takes The Witness Stand SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC.ORG, Wednesday, March 23, 2005 Judge Marinkovic Takes The Witness Stand Written by: Andy Wilcoxson The Honorable Judge Danica Marenkovic took the stand, as a defense witness, at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Wednesday. Mrs. Marenkovic is an ethnic Macedonian, she was elected to her judgeship in 1984 by the Kosovo assembly. She worked at the district court in Pristina, and was the investigating judge who investigated the alleged massacre at Racak on January 15, 1999. She began her testimony...

CHISINAU (AFP) - Moldova's Communist party retained its dominant position after weekend parliamentary elections that, according to final results, confirmed the former Soviet republic's pro-European turn in the past few months. AFP Photo AFP Slideshow: Moldova Elections The Communists, who have recently distanced themselves from Moscow and shifted towards the West, won over 46.1 percent of Sunday's vote, the central election commission said, with all the ballots counted. The vote is vital to the tiny republic splitting Romania -- a future European Union (news - web sites) member -- and Ukraine, as the nation's parliament decides the country's president, with...

Bishkek, 23 February 2005 (RFE/RL)-- Supporters of an opposition candidate occupied a district administration office in Kyrgyzstan's northeastern Issyk-Kul Province today, demanding that authorities allow the politician to run in the country's parliamentary elections on 27 February. Also today, the International Helsinki Federation (IHF) accused Kyrgyz authorities of violating their OSCE commitments by interfering with the democratic process in the run-up to the February elections. The protesting occupants of the local administrative building are some of several thousand people participating in demonstrations in the Tong district of Issyk-Kul Province. A protester told RFE/RL that demonstrators also want the head of...

VIENNA (AFP) - Russia has urged the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE (news - web sites)) to send a mission to Northern Ireland after the "serious setback" in the peace process there, diplomats said. AFP Photo The proposal, which comes amid a simmering dispute between the 55-member state OSCE and Russia, has met with a cool response from Britain. Russia's deputy ambassador to the permanent council of the OSCE, Boris Timokhov, on Thursday said his country wished "to express its concern at the latest serious setback in the process of bringing about a settlement of the Northern...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Most international experts assessing the fairness of Iraq's elections will monitor the Jan. 30 vote from the safety of neighboring Jordan, but a few observers will head to Baghdad and perhaps other Iraqi cities if security permits, U.N. and other officials said Thursday. Experts putting together the international team made clear it will not conduct the usual on-the-ground election monitoring with hundreds of foreign observers in Iraq such as was recently seen in Afghanistan. Instead, it will be assessing the vote based on more than a dozen different criteria. "We believe we can run a very...

The dioxin poisoning of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko has changed the tone of the upcoming December 26 runoff vote, raising questions as to who was responsible and whether outside hands were involved. The contest had already drawn in nations from both east and west along with non-governmental organizations working to steer the outcome. Sunday, September 5. Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko met and dined with that country's intelligence chief, General Ihor Smeshko. He came to ask the general and his forces to stay out of the October 31 election. When Mr. Yushchenko returned home, his wife says she smelled...

The head of a CIS delegation observing disputed election results in the Ukraine was beaten up by a group of opposition supporters after the observer praised the much disputed election results for their “transparency”. Alexei Kochetkov, the head of the CIS-EMO mission in the Ukraine, telephoned to say he had been assaulted by a group of people wearing orange ribbons, a symbol of support for pro-western opposition candidate Yushchenko, who, according to the disputed preliminary results, lost the presidential race, the Interfax news agency reported. On Monday, after observers from the United States and Europe widely criticized the elections for...

...Vladimir Putin... has again exhibited his contempt for democratic rule and his tin ear for the angry opposition in the world's democracies.... Ukraine was starved into submission by Stalin 72 years ago, but when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence. It was not, however, an independence willingly accepted by Russian hardliners.... The massive outpouring of demonstrators in what they call the "Orange Revolution" is an attempt to replicate the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia... Serbia... the Berlin Wall, the "Velvet Revolution" in Czechoslovakia and the Solidarity victory in Poland. There was one significant failure too,...

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukraine's Supreme Court gave the political opposition some breathing room Thursday, ruling that the results of a presidential election are not official until it hears an appeal from a Western-leaning candidate who says it was stolen from him. But there were no indications that opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's call for a national strike was taking hold, and it was unclear whether the high court even has the right to annul the vote count that gave victory to the Kremlin-backed candidate, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. The opposition increased the stakes further Thursday, calling for a nationwide series...

...Last week in London, President Jacques Chirac admitted that getting rid of Saddam "may well have been good idea" — then added a big "but" about the wisdom of early elections in Iraq. His argument for delay was based on the claim that he wanted "broader participation" in the elections.... The camp of Saddam nostalgics, including Chirac and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, have... portrayed the hostage-takers and head-choppers who terrorize parts of Iraq as "la resistance" and insisted that they should have a place in shaping the future of the country.... With Bush re-elected, chances of sabotaging Iraq's elections vanished....

Global monitors find faults By Thomas Crampton International Herald Tribune Wednesday, November 3, 2004 MIAMI The global implications of the U.S. election are undeniable, but international monitors at a polling station in southern Florida said Tuesday that voting procedures being used in the extremely close contest fell short in many ways from the best global practices. The observers said they had less access to polls than in Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of Georgia and that no other country had such a complex...

Democracy: The U.S is about to join in the ranks of countries whose elections have been scrutinized by international observers on the theory that foreigners are more qualified than U.S. citizens to police U.S. elections.Thought the U.S. is the greatest example of representative democracy the world has ever seen, election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have arrived. They were invited by the State Department in an unfortunate attempt to neutralize an issue raised by a dozen Democratic congressmen – the theory that the 2000 presidential was “stolen” and that, without them, the 2004 elections...

MIAMI (AFP) - They have watched elections in the Balkans, in Asia and South Africa, but the complexity of the US presidential election every four years is enough to give a headache to even the most seasones international observer. It is "not one election, but 13,000 elections," said Canadian expert Ron Gould, a member of a delegation from the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation (news - web sites) in Europe (OSCE (news - web sites)) in Miami for the 2004 US elections after observing some 70 elections around the world. "We like to see the setup, how organized it...

A Swiss parliamentarian is to lead an international team of Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) observers at next month's United States presidential election. Barbara Haering told swissinfo that the delegation’s presence would give more credibility to both the US electoral process and the OSCE. "Barbara Haering will lead a delegation of OSCE observers at next month's US presidential elections" (photo caption)

Dulles, Virginia – Next month, the United States will have the distinction of having joined the elite club of countries like Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka whose elections are scrutinized and critiqued by international election monitors. It is a national disgrace that is openly advocated by leftist activists and a group of congressional Democrats. After UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan turned down a request from ten Democrat Congressmen to send poll watchers (he said the petition had to originate with the executive branch of government) the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) gleefully accepted a similar invitation channeled through...

when the U.S. State Department invited the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the U.S. election in November, it opened the door for international intrusion into our democratic process. Since the OSCE invitation, the far-left pressure group Global Exchange announced that it too would be disbursing handpicked international observers to monitor polling stations in five key battleground states. "With this third group entering the fray," says DeWeese, "it is clear that the drive to put our nation's electoral process under the purview of some international authority is a serious goal of the left. The president of...

7 U.S. Groups Ask U.N. for Vote Observers Mon Oct 11, 9:41 PM ET By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS - Seven American activist groups asked the United Nations (news - web sites) on Monday to provide international observers for next month's presidential election. A petition delivered to the U.N. Economic and Social Council said that only the U.N. can "give us recourse to international bodies beyond those within our own national and state governments" in case of a repeat of the problems seen in the 2000 election, which President Bush (news - web sites) won after...

The U.S. State Department cracked open the door and now the invasion has begun. Foreign election monitors determined to oversee the U.S. election this November seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Even Jimmy Carter has gotten into the act. The bottom line is that the November election is being set up to humiliate the United States and place in doubt the legitimacy of our government. Those calling for the election monitors, like Democrat California Representative Barbara Lee, argue that the move is necessary in order to "make certain that every person's voice is heard, every person's vote is...

Election 2004: Democrats aim to prevent repeat of 2000 election fiasco By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press June 14, 2004 HOLLYWOOD — Recalling the contentious 2000 election, Democrats urged party activists on Sunday to find legal observers, push early voting methods and remain vigilant of any problems during the upcoming November election. Party leaders and activists discussed ways to prevent a repeat of the 2000 election in Florida, in which George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes after a 36-day recount was halted by the U.S. Supreme Court. "Any way we cut it, these people are going to try...

Here’s the line in the sand. Americans can either sit down and do nothing about a planned invasion of foreign election observers or stand for their liberty by saying no. There is no middle ground.The Bush Administration, through Secretary of State Colin Powell, has given into pressure from thirteen far-left Democrat members of the House of Representatives and invited an international group to officially observe the November presidential election. Earlier this year, the thirteen Congressmen, led by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), wrote a letter to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to request UN observers for the 2004 presidential...

Washington, D.C.- The American Policy Center charged on Wednesday that the U.S. State Department has invited scandal, fraud, and corruption to the American electoral process with its decision to bring in foreign election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the November presidential election. APC, a grassroots activist organization located in suburban Washington, D.C., is alerting Americans to the dangers of inviting an international body to monitor the upcoming presidential election. APC has discovered that the president of the OSCE election monitoring arm is none other than Florida Representative and disgraced federal judge, Alcee...

2004 Presidential Election Under the Eye of International Observersby Chris Shugart, 19 Aug, 04When I first learned that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had been invited to monitor our presidential election this year, I couldn’t believe it. What happened? Was Franz Kafka suddenly appointed President of the United States?I was angry and confused. Who in their right mind would allow the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights meddle in our elections? Didn’t they have something better to do, like maybe monitor elections in, say, Venezuela where their presidential election is, as I speak, being hotly...

Earlier this month Secretary of State Colin Powell, at the request of several members of Congress, invited the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor our upcoming elections. It is the second time this international organization, of which we are a member, has monitored US elections -- the last time was the congressional elections of 2002. Of course neither the OSCE nor any other international organization should have a say in how we conduct elections in the United States. But then again neither should the federal government. Unlike the other member states of the OSCE, the United...

U.S. Invites Int'l Observers to Election By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA Associated Press Writer August 10, 2004, 5:44 PM EDT WARSAW, Poland -- The United States has invited international observers to monitor November's presidential election, U.S. and European officials said Tuesday. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, said it received the request from the U.S. State Department and would send a team to the United States next month to determine whether to accept the task. The United States is a member of the 55-nation group, which has traditionally focused on monitoring elections in emerging democracies. Adam Ereli, a...

The State Department's invitation for an Austrian human rights group to monitor this year's U.S. presidential election is a "frightening" development and "an absolute threat" to America's independence and sovereignty, according to the head of a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center, said he's especially angry that the Bush administration would reach out to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is based in Vienna, Austria. "Bush continues to give conservatives the rhetoric of sovereignty, independence and strength of the United States, and he continues to give the [opposite]...