Minsk - Senior European officials issued a damning report yesterday on weekend Belarus parliamentary elections, saying they were seriously flawed and had failed to meet international standards of fairness.
A report issued by a parliamentary troika from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament accepted that Mr Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian leader of Belarus, had made improvements to the former Soviet republic's elections law, but said it "still includes substantial and fundamental deficiencies".