Nazarbayev, 65, won 91.01 percent of ballots cast in Sunday's poll in the giant Central Asian country, according to preliminary results, said Central Election Commission chairman Onalsyn Zhumabekov in the capital Astana.

Main opposition candidate Zharmakhan Tuyakbai, who secured just 6.64 percent according to official results, alleged there had been "multiple violations."

"We will take all legal measures to protest the official results of the voting and will press for this election to be declared invalid," Zharmakhan Tuyakbai said in the city of Almaty.

"The authoritarian regime of Nazarbayev is taking a totalitarian turn."

Nazarbayev, whose 16-year rule has transformed this former Soviet backwater into an emerging world oil power, told a triumphant rally of some 4,000 supporters in Astana that "the people of Kazakhstan won."

"You saw that the people voted for stability. This is not about revolution," he said.

Speaking before cheering activists dressed in yellow campaign shirts and caps, Nazarbayev reached out to his opponents, saying: "We also need an opposition. We will listen to them and work with them."

Western monitors were due to deliver their verdict on the conduct of the election later Monday.

According to officials, former labour minister Alikhan Baimenov took third place with 1.65 percent, then Yerasyl Abilkasymov of the People's Communist Party at 0.38 percent, and environmentalist Mels Yeleusizov at 0.32 percent.

Tuyakbai spokesman Aidos Sarimov reacted with sarcasm. "I can only regret that Nazarbayev wasn't given 120 or 150 percent," he told AFP in the country's biggest city of Almaty.

Sarimov said voter lists had been falsified and the official turnout of about 77 percent artificially inflated.

However, the opposition has so far indicated that it will abide by a law banning street demonstrations in the immediate aftermath of the election. Tuyakbai said he would decide about protests according to the "situation."

In his own furious reaction, Communist candidate Abilkasymov said: "It's nonsense. ... This is what happens when people vote on command."

Nazarbayev described Sunday's poll as the fairest in the country's history.

His victory had long been predicted, though not by such a wide margin. Independent analysts say the one-time steel worker, who rose through Communist Party ranks to head Soviet Kazakhstan in 1989, enjoys solid support.

Under Nazarbayev's rule, Kazakhstan has become the most prosperous and stable part of Central Asia, largely thanks to billions of dollars of foreign investment in the country's Caspian Sea oil fields. Kazakhstan is set to become a top-10 world oil producer within a decade.

But the republic, which is roughly the size of western Europe or India and was once part of Genghis Khan's empire, has never held an election judged free and fair by Western observers.

Even before the election, the opposition complained that media bias and pressure from the authorities had made a fair campaign impossible.

About 1,600 observers monitored the election, including some 465 from the influential Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which was due to issue its report on the conduct of voting later Monday.

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