Advance voting opened on Tuesday in Belarus's presidential election, a procedure the hard-pressed opposition said would make it easier for President Alexander Lukashenko to rig a poll the West views with deep suspicion.
Lukashenko, accused in the West of crushing basic rights during his 12 years in power, is heavily favoured to win a new term in Sunday's race against three runners, two from the liberal and nationalist opposition.
Lukashenko, who enjoys genuine popularity but has clamped down hard on opponents at home to prevent any pro-Western revolutions erupting, has vowed to win fairly.
Opponents say his score will be fraudulently inflated and the United States and European Union pledge to impose new sanctions on Belarus if international observers deem the poll unfair - a verdict expected even by Lukashenko's ministers.
Officials have encouraged voters in the country of 10 million to vote in advance - as 14 percent did in Lukashenko's re-election in 2001, denounced in the West as rigged.
"Do not under any circumstances vote in the advance poll," Alexander Milinkevich, the candidate backed by most opposition groups, told a rally last week.
"Your votes will, quite simply, be stolen."
A top election official in the country, which lies between Russia and new EU member Poland, dismissed such concerns.
"We believe that criticism of the advance poll by our opposition and some Western politicians is totally groundless," Sergei Lazovik, secretary of the Central Election Commission, told Reuters.
"This is a standard democratic procedure allowing any citizen to exercise his constitutional right. It is widespread in many Western countries."
The opposition say the advance poll is easy to exploit for fraud as it is difficult to vouch for what happens to ballot boxes over several days and to oversee any count.
"They are obliging students, servicemen, workers in state companies to vote early because it's an easy way to cheat," said Anatoly Lebedko, one of Milinkevich's top campaign lieutenants. "Lack of control over ballot boxes makes a redistribution of votes from Milinkevich to Lukashenko a simple matter."
Lukashenko tells voters he has brought stability and relative prosperity and alleges his rivals are funded by the West to foment violence and subvert his authority.
The president has warned he will tolerate no upheavals like Ukraine's 2004 "Orange Revolution" protests against election fraud, which helped bring liberal president Viktor Yushchenko to power. But like Yushchenko, Milinkevich has urged voters to gather by polling stations on Sunday to try to keep the count honest.
Lebedko was one of two top opposition officials convicted last week on charges of illegal assembly in violation of laws requiring official permission for rallies. Another official was jailed for 15 days, putting him behind bars for the poll.
Police swooped on a weekend rally in Minsk, detaining about 20 participants. Half a dozen were jailed or fined for public order offences, while others are awaiting court decisions.
State television reports at great length on Lukashenko and rarely mentions his rivals by name. Both rivals were highly critical of the president in TV spots allotted by law - in the early evening, when many voters were on their way home from work and thus unlikely to be watching television.
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