Tajik President's party takes lead

Dushanbe - President Imomali Rakhmonov's supporters took the lead yesterday in Tajikistan's first parliamentary poll since the end of a five-year civil war, but the vote was marred by charges of ballo-trigging. Yet despite alleged violations which favoured pro-government parties, Tajikistan's senior Islamic opposition leader vowed that the ex-Soviet republic's peace process would go on. "I think that work on the peace process will not be affected (by the elections)," Mr Said Abdullo Nuri, head of the United Tajik Opposition and the Islamic Renaissance Party, said.