A TEAM of British politicians and academics, led by Lord Parkinson, was accused yesterday of whitewashing a rigged election in the oil-rich Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan.

The incumbent, President Nazarbayev, won a third seven-year term as leader of the former Soviet nation with 91 per cent of the vote, according to preliminary results.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which sent 460 observers, said that the election did not meet international democratic standards. Flaws included restrictions on campaigning, interference at polling stations, multiple voting, pressure on students to vote, media bias and restrictions on freedom of expression, it said.

“There was harassment, intimidation and detentions of campaign staff and supporters of opposition candidates, including cases of beatings of campaign staff,” said the OSCE mission, led by Bruce George, the British Labour MP.

But Lord Parkinson’s seven-strong team, calling itself a “British parliamentary group”, pre-empted the OSCE report with a much more positive assessment. “The presidential election of 4 December represents a very significant advance,” said the report by his team, which also included Peter Lilley, the former Tory Trade Secretary. “The election was genuinely competitive and voters were given a real choice between candidates. We found no reason to doubt the integrity of the election process.”

One of the main opposition leaders accused the team of toning down its criticism because of Britain’s interests in Kazakhstan, which has vast reserves of oil and gas. “They are lying,” Oraz Zhandosov, a former Finance Minister and co-leader of the Naghyz Ak Zhol party, told The Times. “This must have been funded by a large energy company or a front for the Kazakh Government.”

Russian-language media reported the team’s conclusions as though it was an official observer mission from the British Parliament. The group was in fact organised by the Caspian Information Centre, which describes itself as a London-based non-profit think-tank.

Its website says that it is supported by a growing number of contributors who are developing stakes in Kazakhstan’s international businesses.

The centre’s director and sole employee, Gerald Frost, initially told The Times that it had a single private corporate sponsor, but refused to identify it. He later named it as Typhoon Media International, based in Hong Kong, but denied it had interests in Kazakhstan. Its website says Typhoon is “best known for working on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and other gameshows in the Asia-Pacific region”.

John Mann, the Labour head of Britain’s all-party parliamentary group on Kazakhstan, claimed Lord Parkinson’s team, which arrived a few days before the election, was designed to discredit the OSCE mission. “This is like the old Soviet Union, where people go a couple of days before the vote and then say everything was brilliant immediately afterwards,” he said. “One has to question their motives and ask what their agenda is and who is paying.”

Mr Lilley said he did not know who had paid for his trip. “Because I don’t, I cannot mould my opinions to fit someone’s agenda,” he said. “I’m an objective politician and my views are my own.” He said it was good that there were alternative voices to the OSCE. “You might call that a whitewash, but I don’t think it is.”

OBSERVERS UNDER ATTACK

Peter Lilley Former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, then Social Security, then Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party

Lord (Cecil) Parkinson Former MP, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and Conservative Party chairman

Gerald Frost Former head of Thatcherite Centre for Policy Studies and adviser to Conservative ministers

Nirj Deva MEP Conservative MP 1992-1997

Professor Kenneth Minogue Conservative- leaning political science professor at the LSE

Professor Dennis O’Keeffe Social science professor at University of Buckingham, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs and editor of the Salisbury Review

Lord Kilclooney (John D Taylor) Former MP for Strangford and Deputy Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party; chairman of Alpha Newspaper Group

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