Thorough investigation of Ukraine elections needed: Parliamentary delegation should go to the Ukraine

Reacting to the events that have followed Ukraine’s recent presidential election, the Green members of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee* as well as its delegations to the Ukraine and Belarus, issued the following statement:

"Widespread allegations of fraud and manipulation during the second round of the presidential elections in the Ukraine have been confirmed by independent observers. Therefore we ask the Ukrainian Government to review as soon as possible both the pooling and the counting process. To ensure that this is done in a transparent and objective way, we call upon the Ukrainian authorities to fully co-operate with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) during the investigation."

"We call upon the Parliament to immediately send an ad-hoc delegation to observe the electoral counting process and to get in contact with both the Ukrainian authorities and the representatives of the opposition."

"The Greens welcome the maturity and peacefulness of the demonstrations. We urge the Ukrainian authorities to refrain from employing violent methods of crowd control on the demonstrators and to avoid and limit their interventions as much as possible."

"The Russian interference in the Ukrainian electoral process is unacceptable. We ask the EU-Presidency to include the situation in the Ukraine on the agenda of the EU-Russia Summit on 24 and 25 November in the Hague. The EU should strive to convince the Russian authorities to co-operate with the OSCE and to use its influence to make sure that democratic rules are respected."

"Under the present conditions we consider that the meeting scheduled for the 8 December on the implementation of the EU-Ukraine Action Plan has to be suspended until guarantees are given that the democratic rules and the rule of law are respected."

"We think that a transparent and democratic solution to this crisis can and should be reached by the Ukrainian people themselves. This would be a demonstration of the Ukraine’s intention to join the community of democratic countries. It would also send out a positive signal to the rest of the region and the rest of the world."

• Members of the Foreign Affairs Committee: Angelika Beer, Joost Lagendijk, Cem Özdemir, Raúl Romeva Rueda, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Marie Anne Isler Béguin, Hélène Flautre. Members of the EU-Ukraine delegation: Rebecca Harms and Milan Horacek. Member of the EU-Belarus delegation: Elisabeth Schroedter.
  

Source: www.greens-efa.org/cms/pressreleases/dok/101/101175.thorough_investigation_of_ukraine_electi@en.htm