Georges Colombier, a rapporteur for a PACE body monitoring Armenia’s compliance with its membership commitments to the Strasbourg-based organization, said the February 19 elections should be markedly different from the weekend election to Russia’s State Duma strongly criticized by the West. “I hope that they will not take place the way they did in Russia,” he told the Radio Liberty. “I told the prime minister and my other interlocutors this morning that the presidential elections must be conducted better than the parliamentary elections of May 2007 were,” the PACE official told reporters before his meeting with Kocharyan. “Those elections were not handled badly. But everything must be done to make the February 19 elections more democratic.” Yesterday Colombier met the Prime Minister, President Kocharyan and all the factions of the NA.
