WASHINGTON, Nov 1 (AFP) - The US State Department on Monday downplayed the presence of observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who arrived in the United States to witness Tuesday's presidential election.
"The presence of OSCE election observers we don't find troubling at all," said State Department spokesman Adam Ereli. "This is something that all OSCE members routinely do, so this is no exception."
The US State Department invited the Vienna-based OSCE -- a 55-nation body covering mainly Europe and the former Soviet Union -- to observe the 2004 presidential election earlier this year. The United States and Canada are also OSCE members.
"This is part of what we do as a member of OSCE and what all the members of OSCE do when they have elections," Ereli said.
Although US officials have always issued invitations and had foreign observers before, it is "new in the sense that this is the first time they've been at a presidential election, and they've deployed or they've been here in these numbers," Ereli said.
The OSCE has sent observers to state gubernatorial elections and by-elections, Ereli said. "But this is the first time, I think, there have been observers to general presidential election," Ereli said.
Their visit has raised the anger of conservative US commentators and politicians, angry that the US electoral process will be scritinized just like an election in Ukraine or Azerbaijan.
The OSCE mission has made it known since early October that they will especially look at the electronic voting machines, which will be used in states such as Florida.
The machines have been criticized as being unreliable and vulnerable to hacking.
In a report published in September, the OSCE said it believed the weaknesss in elections in the United States, made evident in the 2000 presidential vote, will not be fully corrected in time for Tuesday's vote.
11/01/2004 23:27 GMT - AFP