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The OSCE bureau in Belarus is preparing to phase itself out within months, its chief said Wednesday, after Belarus's move to shut the transatlantic security group’s office was slammed by the EU and the US.
Belarus last week ordered the closure of the office in an apparent response to the group's stinging criticism of its December presidential election in which authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko swept the polls.
The OSCE mission in Minsk would "work for a couple of months to finish programmes and to phase the mission out if there is no other solution," Benedikt Haller, head of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) office in Minsk, told reporters in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius.
Haller was in Vilnius for talks with Lithuania’s foreign minister Audronius Azubalis who has assumed the chairmanship of the OSCE for 2011.
"The mission is formally closed," Azubalis said, adding that its employees would keep on working for a couple months before the all its activities were completely phased out.
"Lithuania is doing all it can, first of all consulting different institutions, partners, collecting information that it could take certain decisions," Azubalis added without elaborating.
OSCE monitors issued a damning report on the presidential polls that listed a litany of vote count violations, saying its observers assessed the tally "as bad and very bad" in almost half of all observed polling stations.
The United States and the European Union on Tuesday slammed Belarus for ordering the OSCE mission closure, and urged it to release hundreds being held in prison for protesting the December elections.