Tag: Kazakh

At least 22 people on board a domestic flight on Kazakhstan’s SCAT airline died when their plane crashed on approach to Almaty airport. Tuesday’s...

A Kazakh border guard confessed to killing 14 of his fellow servicemen at a remote frontier post, blaming internal conflicts and a mental breakdown,...

The sole survivor of a tragedy at a Kazakh border post with China which left 14 guards dead has confessed to murdering his fellow...

The mystery deaths of 14 Kazakh borderguards and a huntsman in a fire at a mountainous border post near China appears to have been...

The ruling party of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev Monday won a landslide victory with over 80 percent of the vote in parliamentary polls which...

Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani and his Kazakh counterpart Karim Massimov on Wednesday discussed ways to broaden the canvas of bilateral cooperation in...

International leaders converged on Kazakhstan on Wednesday for a one-day summit that was to feature Chinese and Russian leaders in rare talks with Iranian...

ASTANA - Riding high on a crest of government-nurtured adulation, Kazakhstan's strongman has now become a star of the silver screen. 'The Sky of My Childhood,' released Thursday in Kazakhstan, is a polished account of the early life of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who last week won a presidential election with an astonishing 95 percent of the vote. International observers criticised the election for ballot-box stuffing and said authorities coerced many into voting. Nazarbayev makes

ASTANA - Kazakhstan's parliament voted on Friday to re-appoint Karim Masimov as prime minister, only hours after the entire cabinet resigned in a formality following the inauguration of President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
By law, Masimov must present a list of his nominees for ministerial posts to Nazarbayev for approval within 10 days.

STANA - Kazakhstan's cabinet offered its resignation on Friday, in line with the constitution, after Nursultan Nazarbayev was inaugurated for five more years as president of the Central Asian state.
Nazarbayev, re-elected by a landslide in Sunday's presidential vote, is expected to re-appoint or replace government ministers over the next few days.
Until then, ministers would continue in an acting capacity, Prime Minister Karim Masimov said in an address to Nazarbayev in

ASTANA - A promise of stability in a volatile region won veteran Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev an overwhelming victory on Monday in a snap presidential election criticised by European monitors for irregularities. Nazarbayev, 70, won another five years at the helm of Central Asia's largest economy by pledging peace and economic growth in the predominantly Muslim country, where the echo of popular revolutions across the Arab world is almost inaudible. The former steelworker, who

ASTANA - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev scored a crushing win Monday in presidential polls that saw him harvest over 95 percent of votes and raised worries about democracy in Central Asia's richest state.
The Central Election Commission said the first official results showed the incumbent had won 95.5 percent of the vote on mass turnout of 89.9 percent -- both figures beating Nazarbayev's performance in his last re-election in 2005.
The snap poll was boycotted by the

ASTANA - The campaign started Thursday for Kazakhstan's presidential election with a victory by strongman President Nursultan Nazarbayev so certain he has decided not even to bother campaigning. Nazarbayev, whose rule over Kazakhstan dates to before its independence from the Soviet Union, faces a challenge from only three relatively obscure candidates in the April 3 polls.
The president called the snap elections after scrapping a plan to hold a referendum on extending his term

ASTANA - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Monday unexpectedly rejected a plan to hold a referendum on prolonging his rule until 2020, saying that he would instead call early presidential polls. The announcement stunned Kazakhstan after parliament earlier this month agreed the controversial referendum should go ahead but also came after rare criticism of the ex-Soviet state by its Western ally the US.
The referendum was backed by the ruling Nur-Otan party which sees

ASTANA - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Friday said he was ready to work for as long as required, as his country is expected to hold a referendum on whether to extend his term until 2020. Nazarbayev's comments delivered during an annual state-of-the-nation address appeared to leave little doubt that he intended to extend his grip over the Central Asia's largest oil producer despite strong criticism from the West.
"I am ready to work for as long as my health allows me.

ASTANA - Kazakhstan's strongman President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Friday rejected the idea of extending his term until 2020 through a national referendum that has been flatly denounced by the United States.
The country's first and only post-Soviet leader did not explain why he was overruling his entire political and business elite in a decision that received almost no attention from state media outlets.
The three-sentence presidential decree said only that Nazarbayev - who

ALMATY - The United States on Tuesday condemned Kazakhstan's move to extend the rule of veteran leader Nursultan Nazarbayev to 2020, bypassing a 2012 election, and said this would be a blow to democracy.
"We believe a national referendum that would replace the presidential elections guaranteed by Kazakhstan's constitution would be a setback for democracy in Kazakhstan," the U.S. government said in a statement.
"We think that it is important that Kazakhstan's government and