TURKMEN PRESIDENT GOING TO RESIGN IN 2009

MOSCOW, April 20 (RIA Novosti) - The life president of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, is going to resign in 2009. He said so at the meeting on Wednesday with the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Dmitry Rupel, making a working tour in Central Asian countries.

Rupel said that Niyazov sees as necessary the holding of presidential election in Turkmenistan in 2009, in which he is not going to be nominated, sources in Ashkhabad told RIA Novosti.

"Turkmenbashi" ("Father of Turkmens") has been running Turkmenistan since 1985, when he became the first secretary of the central committee of the Turkmen Communist Party. In 1990 he was elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet and then president of the Turkmen SSR, getting 93 percent of the votes.

After the adoption of the constitution on June 21, 1992, he gained 99.5 percent of the votes and was the only candidate for the high post. In 1993 Saparmurat Niyazov became "Turkmenbashi".

At the national referendum in January 1994, his powers were prolonged by five years without re-election. At a sitting of the People's Council in 1999, he gained the right to remain as president "without limiting the term of powers".

Niyazov himself initiated a series of elections in Turkmenistan, beginning in 2006, from regional chiefs to the head of state. At a cabinet sitting on April 8, he said: "Society is ready to make the first step towards the spirit of the age, which has been established in the world as a specimen of fair and balanced-out world order and is meeting the interests, mentality and traditions of the Turkmen people".

The Turkmen president stressed that the question of the future elections will be discussed in October at a sitting of the supreme body of power, the People's Council.