19 October 2004	Tuesday	04 Ramazan 1425

WASHINGTON, Oct 18: The United States on Monday denounced what it said was rampant "electoral misconduct" in Belarus' weekend polls, calling the vote to allow the country's authoritarian president to stand for a third term "seriously flawed."

"The election was seriously flawed, didn't meet standards," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "It does not look like the voters of Belarus were given a fair choice or a fair chance to express their choice."

"We deeply regret that the Belarusian people were kept from freely and fairly expressing their will," he told reporters, aligning Washington with the findings of election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Earlier Monday in Minsk, the OSCE said Sunday's legislative elections as well as a referendum on President Alexander Lukashenko's future fell "significantly short" of democratic standards and decried the government's "unrestrained bias and "unregulated intrusion" in the campaign process.

Boucher said the United States stood with the OSCE in pointing out "electoral misconduct (that) continued throughout the voting and vote-tabulation process," noting that independent exit polls showed far different results from those announced by Belarusian officials.-AFP