The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) released a dossier that recounted a string of abuses, including interference in the voting process, intimidation, a lack of access to television airtime for opposition candidates and sloppy vote counting.

According to the OSCE its 655 monitors in the former Soviet republic witnessed "serious violations of procedures" in a third of all the polling stations they visited yesterday, including ballot-box stuffing and the filming of voters.

As conditions worsened throughout the day, teams assessed the ballot counting process as bad or very bad in 43 per cent of counts observed, the report said.

"The November 6 parliamentary elections did not meet a number of OSCE commitments and Council of Europe standards and commitments for democratic elections," the OSCE said today in a statement.

With the results counted in 95 per cent of Azerbaijan's districts, the ruling party currently looks set to win 63 of the country's 125 parliamentary seats.

Exit polls carried out by international observers, including monitors from the US Agency for International Development, have differed sharply from official results.

Azerbaijan's opposition groups have formed the Azadliq (Freedom) coalition to fight the ruling New Azerbaijan Party of President Ilham Aliyev.

Azadliq candidates have won 11 races, while the remaining districts have been won by independent candidates, many of whom are loyal to the Aliyev regime.

Azadliq called for "a peaceful struggle" yesterday to have the elections cancelled and today the group said they had hoped for stronger support from the international observers - the OSCE has stopped short of demanding a re-run.

"It is clear that in some countries, the international community is quite happy to apply one set of standards when it comes to democracy, human rights and freedom of assembly," said Murad Gasanli, a spokesman for Azadliq.

"For other countries, especially those who have oil, the standards are rather different."

Azadliq said today that it has the "strength to overturn the results and conduct new elections" and has called for mass protests on Wednesday, based on the Orange Revolution demonstrations that led to new elections and a change of governnment in Ukraine earlier this year.

Elin Suleymanov, an aide to Mr Aliyev, said that the election was "not as negative as it is being described," but acknowledged there were complaints about the tally and did not rule out a recount if serious violations are proven.

But Ali Akhmadov, the executive secretary of the New Azerbaijan Party struck a harder line, calling the process "transparent, just and democratic" and said that any discrepancies would not be enough to affect the final results.

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