U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns described as "quite negative" Moscow's proposal to reduce vote monitoring by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and ban public reports right after elections.
"Such comments, which are utterly baseless, only go to show that certain quarters in the West are allergic to the sovereign character of Russia's democratic system, which is not developing according to scenarios written across the ocean, but in accordance with domestic laws and the choice that the Russian people made in the early 1990s," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted on its official Web site.
It said that from the OSCE perspective, U.S. democracy "is far from perfect."
Burns called Russia's decision unparalleled and said, "We regret very much this decision by the Russian authorities because it's rather unprecedented in the history of the OSCE."
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe received an official invitation to monitor the December 2 Russian State Duma elections on Wednesday.
The invitation was received by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Warsaw and limits the number of monitors to 70, also placing restrictions on the time allotted for the observers to carry out their work.
An OSCE spokesman commented that during Russia's 2003 parliamentary elections some 500 international observers from 43 countries were sent to Russia.
The December 2 elections are expected to see observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the OSCE, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Nordic Council.
A total of eleven parties will run for the lower house of Russia's parliament, the Central Election Commission said on Sunday.
President Putin earlier said he would top the candidate list of the main pro-Kremlin party United Russia at the elections, and that he could become prime minister in 2008 if the party gains a majority.
The decision has widely been seen as a bid to hang onto power upon the expiration of his second, and under the Russian Constitution, final term as president.
