"The codification of the electoral laws throughout the world would ensure protection against groundless interference with the domestic affairs of countries and prevent arbitrary interpretation of electoral laws for the sake of small-time interests," Mr. Veshnyakov said presenting an international electoral law digest prepared by the Central Electoral Commission.
The Commission's chairman emphasized that the publication was unique and that "there is no international law digest both in Russia or abroad as complete as this one".
The digest comprises about 140 international statutory laws effective with such organization as the UN, OSCE, Council of Europe and CIS, as well as resolutions by the European Court of Human Rights and 12 resolutions by the Russian Constitutional Court.
"We believe it is impossible to improve our national electoral law without relying on international electoral principles and norms," Mr. Veshnyakov said.
He also noted that the CIS member states had adopted the Convention on Democratic Election Standards, Rights and Freedoms.
According to Mr. Veshnyakov, work on the codification of electoral laws should be done within the framework of the Council of Europe, too, and throughout the world as a whole.
The chairman of the State Duma's Committee for International Affairs, Konstantin Kosachev, said that common electoral standards would put an end to the current 'double standards'.
"The lack of common standards enables certain nations not to recognize elections in some countries as democratic, while recognizing them as such in other, 'necessary' states," Mr. Kosachev said.
He cited the elections in Afghanistan and Ukraine as the case in point. Both elections, he contends, witnessed obvious violations and both were pronounced either democratic or undemocratic by different countries depending on the latter's interests.
"Violations of electoral laws during elections in young democracies are unavoidable, but the very fact of democratic elections there is valuable," he added.
