Azerbaijan's newly-electedpresident has warned the leader of the opposition hewould be held to account for violent protests following polls criticised as unfair by international observers.
After hundreds more opposition supporters were arrested innight raids, Ilham Aliyev said there would be no repeat of riotslike the one seen on Thursday when at least two died in clasheswith truncheon-wielding police.
"Isa Gambar should expect the judgment of the Azeri peopleas a provocateur and a person who has blood on his hands," IlhamAliyev said in reference to the leader of the Musavat Party andpresidential runner-up accused of standing behind the protest.
The OSCE democracy watchdog criticised the poll citing casesof ballot-stuffing, intimidation of the opposition and policeviolence. The opposition said they had been robbed of victory.
Gambar, who as a presidential candidate enjoys immunityuntil official results are announced, remained defiant during aninterview at his Baku flat, which he said was under policesurveillance. Three foreign observers were staying with him."No threats will intimidate me and my comrades-in-arms. Wewill continue peaceful struggle for democracy in accordance withthe constitution of Azerbaijan," he told Reuters. Gambardismissed suggestions he may ask for political asylum abroad.
Thursday's violence highlighted the tensions facing Ilham,who took over from his ailing father, Haydar Aliyev, in thefirst dynastic succession of the ex-Soviet world.
But analysts said he had so far shown strength in movingswiftly to silence opposition in a country long criticised byhuman rights groups but backed by Western governments andinvestors, including BP, in an oil pipeline being built fromBaku to the Mediterranean Sea.
"All those law breakers who participated in the acts of massunrest and vandalism will have to answer for their actions underAzeri law," Ilham told reporters at a memorial to Azeris whodied fighting for independence from the Soviet Union.
"I see the mass unrest as an attempt to push the countryback to the early 1990s by the same people who provoked thetrouble then," he said. "These people want to bring in chaos,but this will not happen."
Interior Minister Ramil Usubov said some 200 people had beendetained after the violence. Independent reports say some ofthem have already been given short prison sentences.
Throughout his campaign, Ilham warned Azeris that Gambar,his main contender, would bring back turmoil of the early 1990swhen a government fell and Armenians took swathes of Azeri land.
In 1993 Aliyev senior, who is lying in a US hospital forheart and kidney treatment, was asked to take the reins ofpower, and for many brought stability. His son said the ailingleader had congratulated him by telephone.
Yesterday, Igbal Agazade, leader of another opposition partywho addressed the crowd at the protest, was arrested after theparliament stripped him of his immunity from prosecution.
On Ilham's television channel, pictures of injured soldiersand protesters smashing cars and buses were set to the rousingmusic of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. A red X was then slappedacross the face of Gambar with the words "Say no to fascism".
Usubov has said some 50 policemen and 16 soldiers wereinjured in Thursday's protest, 20 seriously. One officerreceived stab wounds and one civilian died. Rights groups said atotal of 300 were injured. Other officials said two were dead.