Turkmen dissidents say West ignores dictatorship

ALMATY, Feb 13 (Reuters) Exiled dissidents today accused the West on Tuesday of cynically ignoring a new dictatorship in Turkmenistan because of the Central Asian state's gas wealth.

Acting Turkmen leader Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, who has promised to continue the policies of late president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov, is widely expected to be declared the winner of Sunday's election.

Senior officials, including Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and Assistant US Secretary of State Richard Boucher, will converge on the Turkmen capital Ashgabat for the new president's inauguration tomorrow.

However, official results have still not been released and no time has been set for their publication. Human rights groups and exiles have condemned the poll, prompted by Niyazov's sudden death from a heart attack in December, as a sham.

''Overseeing the election, the West has taught all of us a brilliant lesson of world-scale cynicism,'' Sapar Yklymov, an exiled Turkmen dissident, told Reuters by telephone from Sweden.

Yklymov, a 54-year-old former deputy agriculture minister, has lived in exile since 1994. He is accused of trying to kill Niyazov in a 2002 assassination attempt and says his daughter is under house arrest in Turkmenistan.

''We all understand that they (in the West) need access to Turkmen natural gas. But, comrades, don't lose face, don't fall so low,'' he said. ''I am livid, I am virtually speechless.'' ''IT KILLS FAITH IN DEMOCRACY'' Turkmenistan's exiled opposition leader Khudaiberdy Orazov, who could not challenge Berdymukhamedov without Western security guarantees, said the vote was ''an impudent grab of power'' and ''a travesty of real choice''.

''It appears the West, the United States and Richard Boucher in particular, had been insincere while making declarations about human rights and democracy,'' he told Reuters from Sweden.

''This is just dishonest, it means all such statements are just empty words uttered to exert pressure on someone. This is just disheartening, it kills human faith in democratic values.'' Foreign diplomats hope the first contested election in Turkmenistan's history might herald gradual change.

Former imperial master Russia, which controls Turkmenistan's main gas pipeline export outlet, has been vying with Washington to gain strategic control of resource-rich Central Asia.

Interfax news agency said Russia's government delegation was heading to Ashgabat ''to strengthen the existing work on partnership with the new leadership, particularly in the fuel and energy sector''.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and Georgia's Mikhail Saakashvili, propelled to power by popular revolutions promising close ties with the West and democratic values, will be among Ashgabat's guests tomorrow.

''Yushchenko and Saakashvili call themselves great democrats, but all the same they do not hesitate to rush to any dictatorship at its first call, and sometimes without any call, ready for anything for some cheap momentary gains,'' Orazov said.

REUTERS DKA RN1942