UZBEKS STALL ODIHR ELECTION ASSESSMENT TEAM VISIT

C O N F I D E N T I A L TASHKENT 001910 SIPDIS SIPDIS USMISSION OSCE FOR ELIZABETH KAUFMAN E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/05/2017 TAGS: PREL PGOV OSCE UZ SUBJECT: UZBEKS STALL ODIHR ELECTION ASSESSMENT TEAM VISIT REF: A. TASHKENT 1823 ¶B. NOVEMBER 2 OSCE DAILY DIGEST Classified By: Poloff Tim Buckley for reasons 1.4 (B, D) ¶1. (C) Summary. An OSCE staffmember told poloff on November 3 that the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) election assessment team, which was expected by November 1, had not arrived in Tashkent and the status of the visit was uncertain. Poloff spoke with OSCE Senior Project Officer Bernard Rouault on November 4, who confirmed that the members of the assessment team have not yet been issued visas by the MFA despite his repeated follow-up inquiries. The GOU may be taking advantage of the OSCE Spanish delegation's delay in disseminating the invitation to ensure that any ODIHR observer mission to Uzbekistan will be poorly prepared and small in scale. End summary. ¶2. (C) The OSCE Project Coordination Office (PCO) in Tashkent worked for several weeks to determine whether the GOU had delivered a formal invitation for OSCE to observe the upcoming December elections. Ultimately, the Tashkent PCO determined that the Uzbeks delivered an invitation on September 26 to the Spanish OSCE delegation, which currently holds the Chairmanship. The Tashkent PCO only received the invitation on October 19 (see reftel A) because the Spanish delegation apparently did not distribute the official invitation from the GOU in a timely manner. Rouault emphasized that the Uzbeks are not at fault for this delay. ¶3. (C) As noted in reftel, the Tashkent PCO immediately began preparing for an ODIHR election assessment team to visit Uzbekistan and determine the scale and logistics of an observer mission. The Tashkent PCO submitted visa applications to the MFA more than 10 days ago, and Rouault has personally followed up on the status of the applications on numerous occasions since then. The Warsaw-based team initally planned to arrive on October 30, but the MFA continues to tell Rouault that the visas will take time and the applications are under consideration. With elections less than seven weeks away, Rouault is concerned that by the time the assessment team is allowed into Uzbekistan there will be very little time to organize a proper observer mission. ¶4. (C) Comment. This is the first time the GOU has invited ODIHR to observe elections in the past six years, but the GOU remains nervous about how the elections will be perceived in the west. The GOU may sense that there is an opportunity to claim credit for inviting an OSCE observer mission soon after elections were announced in September while taking advantage of the delay to stall the assessment team's work. When the assessment team finally is issued visas to come to Uzbekistan there will be very little time to organize a thorough observer mission, which could allow the GOU to have the best of both worlds. Post had not yet seen reftel B, but Rouault's comments indicated that he had no knowledge of an Uzbek decision to limit ODIHR or of Russian influence. NORLAND