Europe's main democracy body, which endorsed Kyrgyzstan's July 10 presidential polls, has barred the country from voting within the organisation because of unpaid membership dues, a Kyrgyz official said on Friday.
The move was taken by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) because Kyrgyzstan owed 993,157 euros in unpaid dues since independence in 1991, Foreign Ministry spokesman Aslan Anarbayev told Reuters.
He said the Foreign Ministry had asked the Finance Ministry to find the necessary sum urgently in foreign cash and pay off the arrears to the OSCE to regain voting rights. "This will not influence in any way our relationship with the OSCE. But this will have a negative reflection on the image of our state now widely seen as a bankrupt one," he said.
The OSCE said earlier this week that the presidential election, won by a landslide by Kurmanbek Bakiyev, "marked clear progress" and civil and political rights of voters were "basically respected".
Bakiyev had been acting president of the ex-Soviet Central Asian state since veteran leader Askar Akayev was toppled in March by a wave of popular protests over fraudulent parliamentary polls.