The southern US state of Texas has warned it could prosecute election observers from the OSCE, a global body that regularly monitors voting around the world, if they try to visit polling stations next month.

In a letter to the election-monitoring head at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Texas attorney general Greg Abbott said the group's views on the November 6 US elections were "legally irrelevant."

And he warned that OSCE observers, deployed for White House and other election races in two weeks' time, will not be allowed to come within 100 feet of a polling station in the famously no-nonsense state.

The Vienna-based OSCE regularly monitors elections in its member states, many in the former Soviet bloc, some of which have struggled to meet international standards as fledgling democracies over the last two decades.

It also sends observers to the United States, as a key member of the organization.

The OSCE notably raised questions about the 2000 presidential election won eventually by George W. Bush, but only after prolonged legal and administrative wrangling which ended in the Supreme Court.

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