Russia's next president, Dmitry Medvedev, yesterday vowed to uphold his mentor Vladimir Putin's policies after an easy presidential election win.

Highlighting the double act that will run Russia, Medvedev stood beside Putin on stage at a victory rock concert in Red Square in his first public appearance after official results were released from Sunday's election.

With 99.45 percent of the votes counted, Medvedev had 70.23 percent, the Central Election Commission said. Because of a higher turnout, more Russians chose him than picked Putin in the 2004 presidential election - 52 million votes to 49.6 million.

Andreas Gross, head of a Western monitoring group, said the election's outcome broadly reflected the will of the people.

Medvedev, 42, will be the youngest Russian leader since Tsar Nicholas II when he is sworn in on May 7. He has asked former KGB spy Putin to be his prime minister. Putin, 55, was prevented by term limits from running for re-election.

"I think (my presidency) will be a direct continuation," said Medvedev, referring to Putin's eight years in office, a period marked by a concentration of power in the Kremlin and a willingness to stand up to the West on foreign policy.

Putin and Medvedev say they will abide by the constitution, which gives the president control of foreign policy and "power ministries" such as defense and the security services, while the prime minister looks after the economy and social services.

But it is still not clear which of them will really be in charge of the vast, nuclear-armed country, and analysts question if their power-sharing arrangement can last long in a nation accustomed to having a single, strong leader.

Many Russians are enjoying the benefits of the biggest economic boom in a generation,fueled largely by oil exports, and they see Medvedev as the natural heir to Putin and the best chance of hanging on to their new-found prosperity.

Medvedev, a former law professor who has spent most of his working life in Putin's shadow, said he would not let his powerful prime minister encroach on his authority.

"The president's main office is in the Kremlin. The prime minister's permanent location is the White House (government headquarters)," he told reporters at his campaign headquarters.

Turnout almost 70%

Countrywide turnout was 69.65 percent. The highest turnout was registered in the war-torn republic of Chechnya, with about 91 percent, still below a record of more than 99 percent in the December 2007 parliamentary poll.

Medvedev's nearest rival, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, had 17.76 percent of votes on Sunday.

Kremlin opponents called Sunday's election a one-sided farce after Medvedev won by a huge margin without taking part in a single campaign debate.

"This is a secret service KGB operation to transfer power from one person to another," former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who was disqualified from the ballot, said.

Medvedev signaled Russia under his presidency would not abandon its tough positions on issues such as Kosovo and Washington's plans for a missile shield in Eastern Europe that have put Moscow at odds with the West.

"We should pursue independent foreign policies, the ones we had in the past eight years, with the main goal of protecting our national interests on all fronts by all possible means, but of course sticking to ... legal rules," Medvedev said.

Kremlin officials said the fact the election was one-sided did not mean it was unfair. Election chiefs said they knew of no violations that would put the result in doubt.

Reactions from EU, UK

The European Union executive said yesterday it was confident Dmitry Medvedev's election as Russian president would boost Russia-EU ties but urged Moscow to honor commitments including on democracy and human rights.

"I am confident that under president Medvedev the Russian Federation and the European Union will consolidate and develop their strategic partnership," Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a statement.

He added the partnership should be based "not only on common interests but also on respect for the values to which we both declared our commitment."

Britain said yesterday it hoped to see greater cooperation with Russia after the election.

"We have always said that we will look for opportunities to improve our relationship with Russia, and hope to see greater cooperation on a number of issues, but we should judge the new Russian government on its actions and the results of those actions," Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman said.

Asked if Brown had any concerns about whether the election was fully democratic, the spokesman said it was "a bit too early to reach a judgment on that".

Relations between London and Moscow have been strained since a former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinenko, was poisoned while living in London in exile. Russia has refused to hand over the main suspect in the murder, Andrei Lugovoy, to face trial.

Agencies

(China Daily 03/04/2008 page12)