Georgia Willing to Monitor Ukrainian Runoff Vote
Civil Georgia, Tbilisi / 25 Jan.'10 / 17:43

Georgia has “a great desire” to monitor second round of presidential elections in Ukraine on February 7 “to have first hand information” about the polls, Nino Kalandadze, the Georgian deputy foreign minister, said on Monday.

“But if the country [Ukraine] does not want [Georgian observers], of course we can not impose our good will on anyone,” she said.

Kalandadze said that sending of Georgian observers to monitor the January 17 elections in Ukraine was agreed with Kiev; “it was their initiative,” she said.

“But the issue then grew into an internal [Ukrainian] political confrontation and misunderstanding,” Kalandadze said.

A former chairman of the Georgian Central Election Commission (CEC), Levan Tarkhnishvili, who is still in Ukraine, coordinating the issues related with the Georgian observers together with ruling party lawmaker Givi Targamadze, said that “at the first stage” the Georgian side planned to submit the list of about 400 would-be observers to the Ukrainian CEC for registration to monitor the February 7 runoff.

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