The monitoring on Armenia conducted by the Council of Europe will be continued till the next parliamentary and presidential elections, for the republic still has to prove its ability to hold elections at the level of the international standards. The present decision was taken at the sitting of the CE Parliamentary Assembly held in Paris November 5. As reported by Arminfo agency, chairman of the NA commission for foreign issues Armen Rustamian, who took part in the forum, noted that the preliminary report about the monitoring carried out in Armenia touches upon the issue of the presidential and parliamentary election of 2003. The report as well points out to the numerous violations of the electoral code emphasizing that falsifications were made by the supporters of almost all the presidential contenders, however not bearing mass nature to cast doubt on the outcomes of the elections. As for the parliamentary election, the report stated that it also did not correspond to the international standards, but was more democratic than the presidential one. The members of the monitoring commission proposed Armenia to make amendments to the electoral code to avoid problems in future. The European parliamentarians, particularly, offered to change the order of forming the election commissions, expand the authorities of the observers and make the calculation of the votes more transparent.
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