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Russia unconcerned by NATO's assessment of S Ossetia election

NATO does not recognize the presidential election that was held in South Ossetia on Sunday, November 13, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said

BRUSSELS, November 14 (Itar-Tass) — Russia is unconcerned by NATO’s assessments of the presidential election in South Ossetia, Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian ambassador to North-Atlantic Alliance said Monday in a comment on NATO Secretary General’s statement regarding the election results.

“NATO doesn’t have the appropriate competence to make statements of this kind,” Rogozin said. “It isn’t a humanitarian organization and it doesn’t have observers either in the region in general or at this election specifically.”

NATO does not recognize the presidential election that was held in South Ossetia on Sunday, November 13, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.

He reiterated NATO’s position of non-recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states and referred to the former as a region of Georgia.

Rasmussen claimed that the election in the young South Ossetian republic, the first one after the Georgian government’s armed punitive operation it in August 2008, does not facilitate a peaceful and long-term settlement of the situation in Georgia.

He indicated that NATO reaffirms one more time its support to Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within what he called the internationally recognized borders of that country.

Catherine Ashton, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy said the EU does not recognize a legitimate grounding of the presidential election in South Ossetia.

She voiced the EU’s full support to Georgia’s “territorial integrity.”

"In view of the reports about the elections in the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia on the 13 November, this statement is to recall that the European Union does not recognize the constitutional and legal framework within which these elections have taken place," Baroness Ashton said in her statement.

She stressed in this connection the importance of consultations on the long-term upkeep of peace and stability in the region. The consultations are held in Geneva.

Georgia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze made a rather predictable comment on the elections, calling them “illegitimate and unlawful”.

She claimed that two-thirds of the native population of South Ossetia – which she labeled with the term ‘Tskhinvali region’ – had been driven out of that country and thus did not have an opportunity to take part in the election.

This made the Sunday voting devoid of legal grounds, Kalandadze said.

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