(Adds Russian, EU reaction)
By Michael Stott
MOSCOW, Feb 7 (Reuters ) - Europe's main security and humanrights watchdog said on Thursday it had cancelled plans tomonitor Russia's presidential election next month, citingunacceptable restrictions imposed by Moscow.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's(OSCE) election body ODIHR said it would not send a monitoringmission for the March 2 election, which President VladimirPutin's protege Dmitry Medvedev is expected to win easily.
"We made every effort in good faith to deploy our mission,"said ODIHR director Christian Strohal in a statement. "... theRussian Federation has created limitations that are notconducive to undertaking election observation".
In a separate announcement, the OSCE's parliamentaryassembly also scrapped plans to watch the Russian election.This leaves a group from the Parliamentary Assembly of theCouncil of Europe (PACE) as the only Western body stillplanning to watch next month's vote.
Russia said it suspected ODIHR's intention from the outsetwas to boycott the election.
"We believe such actions by ODIHR are unacceptable ... Thisposition can only cause us to feel the deepest regret," theRussian foreign ministry said in a statement.
It added that ODIHR had displayed "contempt for basicethical norms ... which, it seems, indicates that ODIHR fromthe start was not even trying to agree on mutually acceptableconditions for monitoring."
Slovenia, holder of the European Union's rotatingpresidency, expressed its support for ODIHR's electionobservation work.
"The Presidency regrets that, due to the restrictions (laiddown by Russia) ... the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutionsand Human Rights (ODIHR) was put in a situation where it foundit impossible to execute its mandate and cancelled the electionobservation mission," it said in a statement.
MONITORS NUMBERS
The pullouts follow a row with Moscow over the number ofobservers permitted to watch the election and the date theycould begin their work. The ODIHR complained that too fewobservers were invited, too late in the campaign.
Russia said it was complying fully with its internationalobligations to the OSCE and accused the watchdog of attemptingto politicise the dispute.
Shortly before the OSCE announced its pullout, RussianForeign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that Moscow would notbow to ultimatums and said the organisation needed reform tostop it from "inventing instructions".
The dispute echoed a similar row last year, when the ODIHRpulled out of monitoring Russia's parliamentary election oversimilar issues, though the OSCE's parliamentary assembly didsend a team. Putin's United Russia party went on to win alandslide victory.
A spokesman for the Council of Europe's parliamentaryassembly declined to comment on whether it would go ahead withits mission next month after the two OSCE bodies had pulledout.
He said the head of an advance delegation currently inMoscow, Andreas Gross, would deal with the issue at a schedulednews conference on Friday.
(Additional reporting by Mark Heinrich in Vienna, ConorSweeney in Moscow and David Brunnstrom in Brussels; Editing byRichard Balmforth)
