INTERNATIONAL MONITORS CRITICIZE AUTHORITIES’ PERFORMANCE.

The European Institute for the Media, which monitored the campaign, reported that television and other state media had "clearly favored Ter-Petrosian through its tendentious coverage." The OSCE monitoring group in its preliminary assessment said that television airtime allotted to Ter-Petrosian had far exceeded the airtime available to all other candidates taken together. OSCE observers expressed concern over numerous local irregularities committed by the authorities, but the head of the OSCE delegation stated that this factor did "not significantly affect" the election’s outcome. Other Western monitors reported that the fraud constituted a widespread pattern. The Russian-led monitoring group of the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly was the only one to describe the election as free and fair. (Noyan-Tapan, The New York Times, The Financial Times, September 24 and 25)

Yeltsin Operation Delay Threatens to Turn Him into a Lame Duck.