September 30, 2008	Tuesday	Ramazan 29, 2008

MINSK, Sept 29: Opposition candidates in Belarus did not win a single parliamentary seat in a weekend election that President Alexander Lukashenko has said he hopes will promote better relations with the West.

“There is no one from the opposition in parliament,” the secretary of the Central Electoral Commission, Nikolai Lazovik, said.

Lukashenko is seeking closer ties with the West after a series of rows over gas prices with key ally Russia. He has freed political prisoners and allowed 78 opposition candidates to compete on Sunday for some of 110 parliamentary seats.

But lack of opposition representation in parliament may complicate his efforts to find favour in the West.

“This spits in the face of the European community,” Alexander Kozulin, an opposition leader freed from jail last month, said, referring to the election results.

Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers are due to report at 3pm (1200 GMT) on whether they found the poll free and fair.

“The OSCE is in a pretty sensitive position,” Kozulin said.

“They need to produce some positive assessment, but they will find it difficult to do after what has happened.”

No election in the former Soviet republic, wedged between Russia and three European Union states, has won western approval since the mid-1990s.

The head of the Central Electoral Commission Lidia Yermoshina said the number of seats won by the opposition should not be a consideration in the assessment of OSCE monitors.

“I think what matters from the OSCE is the process rather than the result,” she told a news briefing. “If this is not so, then the mission is conducting political, rather than monitoring tasks.”

She said the outcome reflected the fact that in Belarus “the word opposition sounds alarming. Voters feel afraid to lose what they have”.

Opposition leaders, who derided the election as a show staged by Lukashenko for the West, said they were unsurprised by the outcome.—Reuters