Four hundred and one foreigners will join more than 61,000 Georgians to serve as monitors of the forthcoming parliamentary elections of the South Caucasus country.

The elections are slated for Oct. 1.

The 401 foreign observers represent such international institutions as the OSCE Office of Democratic Institutes and Human Rights, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, the European Parliament, and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. The international observers, hailing from parliaments of 42 countries, have formed a joint monitoring mission.

Zurab Kharatishvili, chairman of the Georgian Central Election Commission (CEC), told local media that there would be more than 61,000 local observers as well, as there has been an unprecedented interest in the 2012 Georgian parliamentary elections.

The international monitoring mission has pronounced an Oct. 2 press conference regarding the elections in the format of a preliminary statement.

Giga Bokeria, secretary of the Georgian National Security Council, on Sunday briefed mostly foreign journalists in Tbilisi that any attempt would be illegal to pronounce election results in accordance with sources other than the CEC. The national security advisor to the Georgian president said that it is the most competitive parliamentary elections in the Georgian history.