YEREVAN (Reuters) - The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said on Wednesday Armenia's presidential election was deeply flawed and fell short of international standards. A statement from the OSCE delegation, one of a number of teams scrutinising Monday's vote, said electoral law violations had been found at 15 percent of the more than 800 polling stations monitored across the poor but strategic republic. It said significant improvements would be needed for the second-round runoff between Prime Minister Robert Kocharyan and rival Karen Demirchyan, Armenia's Soviet-era leader, to be fair. "Our statement speaks for itself," said Sam Brown, the chief OSCE observer. "Although this election was deeply flawed, we don't believe the outcome would have been in any way altered by the violations we observed." Asked to elaborate, he told reporters: "The first two would have been the first two regardless." He said the OSCE had deployed 200 observers and they visited more than 800 polling stations, about half the total in Armenia, which lies close to the oil-rich Caspian Sea basin. The statement said most polling stations and electoral districts monitored by the OSCE were manned by diligent staff trying to implement the law. "However, in approximately 15 percent of those precincts significant violations of law or regulations were observed," it said. "These would have called into question the validity of the election had there been a close result." It said it had found evidence of "ballot box stuffing". Other areas that would need rectifying for the March 30 runoff included voting in the military, the use of state resources, the presence of police and other unauthorised personnel in polling stations, media bias and campaign violence, the statement added.