Kyrgyz PM wins first round of presidential poll

Kyrgyz Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev has won the Central Asian state's presidential poll outright in the first round, the central election commission said on Monday.

Kyrgyz Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev has won the Central Asian state's presidential poll outright in the first round, the central election commission said on Monday.

"According to the initial results, Almazbek Atambayev has been elected the president of Kyrgyzstan," central election commission chief Tuigunaly Abdraimov told reporters after Sunday's ballot.

"There will be no second round. Atambayev won more than half of the votes and we can say that he won in the first round."

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Almost complete results from the first vote showed the moderate premier holding a commanding lead of 62.9% of the vote.

His two Kyrgyz nationalist rivals in the 16-candidate field -- the one-time parliament speaker Adakhan Madumarov and the former boxer Kachimbek Tashiyev -- trailed with 14.9 and 14.4%.

The central election commission chief reported several isolated incidents of voting irregularities that included attempts to stuff ballot boxes in certain regions.

But he stressed that the violations were small in scale and would not invalidate the overall result of the vote.

"Results at certain precincts will probably be annulled," Abdraimov said. "But these violations cannot affect the results themselves."

This was the country's first presidential election since a popular uprising in April 2010 ousted the regime of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and a wave of ethnic violence in June the same year killed 470 people.