Six candidates to run in presidential race in Kyrgyzstan.

BISHKEK, July 23 (Itar-Tass) - Presidential elections will be held in Kyrgyzstan on Thursday. Six candidates are running for the country's main post.

They include incumbent President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the single
opposition candidate Almazbek Atambayev, the former prime minister and the
leader of the Social Democratic Party, Temir Sariyev, the leader of the
Ak-Shumkar party (the White Falcon) as well as self-nominees - Nurlan
Motuyev, Zhenishbek Nazaraliev and Toktaiym Umetalieva.
A source at the Central Commission for Elections and Referendums told
Itar-Tass that the elections would be considered valid if more than 50
percent of 2.7 million voters turn up at polling stations.
On the election day 2, 333 polling stations will be open from 8:00 in
the morning local time (6:00 Moscow time) until 20:00 in the evening
(18:00 Moscow time). Forty-nine polling stations will work in 23 foreign
countries outside Kyrgyzstan. Damir Lisovsky, the chairman of the Central
Electoral Commission, said that 147,000 Kyrgyz citizens were residing
abroad, of which 80,000 are staying in Russia.
The presidential election is being held on a weekday for the first
time in the country's history following a decision by Kyrgyz
Constitutional Court and the national parliament. Therefore, the citizens
of Kyrgyzstan will be allowed to vote on absentee ballots at polling
stations that are the closest to their places of work. Besides, the Kyrgyz
authorities have decided to give up the practice of marking voter's
fingers during the vote for the first time in the last ten years.
According to the Central Electoral Commission, 516 international
observers from 48 countries, including representatives of the OSCE, CIS
and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Another 2,000 observers
will represent the interests of the candidates as well as various human
rights groups and public organizations in Kyrgyzstan.
Five thousand policemen will guard law and order during the polls;
anther 7,000 policemen will be in the reserve.
"All necessary measures have been taken to hold open and transparent
presidential elections," incumbent President Kurmanbek Bakiyev told the
head of the OSCE observer mission Radmila Shekerinskaya. "We will thwart
any attempts to organize disturbances within the framework of the law, we
won't allow anybody to destabilize the situation in the country," Bakiyev
went on to say.
According to the Central Electoral Commission, Bakiyev has the most
impressive campaign fund worth about 826,000 dollars. The election fund of
Almazbek Atambayev is estimated at more than 100,000 dollars. The total
campaign fund of the four remaining candidates is 39,000 dollars.
The presidential polls will require 3.67 million dollars from the
Kyrgyz budget.

.Peaceful settlement of conflicts has no alternative - Ulyanov.

VIENNA, July 23 (Itar-Tass) - The head of the Russian delegation at
the OSCE forum for security cooperation said on Wednesday that there was
no alternative to a peaceful political settlement of conflicts.
Mikhail Ulyanov said that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili
grossly violated that principle last August when he decided to use force
against South Ossetia. His actions destroyed the entire "framework of a
peaceful settlement".
The hostilities, which the Georgian leaders had unleashed against
civilians in South Ossetia and the Russian peacekeepers, were not
'spontaneous'. They had been planned in advance, Ulyanov went on to say.
"All that resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths and a considerable
number of refugees. Georgia ceased to exist within its previous borders.
The Georgian authorities shot dead the territorial integrity of their
country from the Grad multiple rocket launchers. But the saddest thing is
that, judging from the rhetoric of the Georgian leaders, they didn't draw
any proper conclusions," Ulyanov emphasized.
He said that the conflict made it absolutely clear that any further
negotiations in the former conceptual format would now be impossible.
" I think that today it would be hard to believe that anybody thinks
that people in South Ossetia or Abkhazia would wish to re-unite with
Georgia voluntarily or even if force is to be used again. Now it's
absolutely unthinkable," Ulyanov said.
"Simultaneously, it became clear that the security and the bare
survival of the peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia can only be possible
if their rights to self-determination are recognized and independent
states are created with a prospect of good-neighbourly or at least
non-confrontational relations between them and Georgia," the head of the
Russian delegation said in conclusion.

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