Belarus' seat in OSCE Parliamentary Assembly remains vacant

2001-07-06 16:15:00

Minsk, 6 July. The meetings of the Credentials and Standing Committees of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Paris on July 5 and 6 failed to resolve the dispute between Belarus' 13th Supreme Soviet and the National Assembly over the right to represent the country in the Assembly. In February, the Credentials Committee recommended keeping Belarus' seat vacant since the mandate of the Supreme Soviet, the parliament disbanded by the Belarusian ruler in 1996, has run out, while elections for the National Assembly's House of Representatives fell below international standards. This time again, on hearing reports from delegations of the Supreme Soviet and the National Assembly, the head of the OSCE Advisory and Monitoring Group in Belarus, and members of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's ad hoc Working Group on Belarus, the Committee proposed that the vacant seat concept should remain in place. That means that the Committee regards neither Supreme Soviet nor the National Assembly as a fully-fledged legislature. Russian State Duma Chairman Gennady Seleznyov and the delegations of Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Tajikistan voted against the Committee's proposal, blocking a resolution on the matter. "For us, this is an optimal result and it is good that our opponent Seleznyov helped us achieve it," Anatoly Lebedko of the Supreme Soviet commented. At the February hearing, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Adrian Severin said that failure to pass the resolution means that Belarus' seats remains vacant. Supreme Soviet representatives insist that since no formal decision has been made, the Supreme Soviet de facto retains its seat in the Assembly.