950822

Kyrgyz officials

seek vote to keep

Akayev in power

BISHKEK: Local officials in Kyrgyzstan have collected 1.2 million signatures calling for a referendum on whether President Askar Akayev should prolong his term in office until 2001, a presidential spokesman said on Tuesday.

He said the officials, who met Akayev last week, were campaigning on a platform of "Unity, not election campaigns".

Akayev, a former physicist who has led the tiny Central Asian state through painful market reforms since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has ruled out a referendum.

"I have said many times that presidential elections will be held in 1996 according to the people's will," he said recently.

But his spokesman said Akayev would make a final decision after the 1,000th anniversary celebrations of the Manas national epic poem later this month.

Voters in the neighbouring former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have already approved extending the term of office of their leaders into the 21st century.

The Kyrgyz spokesman said the 1.2 million signatures collected in Kyrgyzstan represented 52 percent of voters.-Reuter