ALMATY - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev warned the West on Tuesday that his country could not yet subscribe to Western-style democracy and said he wanted to guard against instability spreading through Central Asia.

Nazarbayev has ruled the vast oil-producing country since 1989, when Kazakhstan was still a Soviet republic, and, facing a possible election in December, has been accused by the opposition and rights campaigners of clamping down on dissent.

Democratic "revolutions" in ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia, a coup in Kyrgyzstan and the bloody suppression of a revolt in Uzbekistan, have unsettled Central Asia's long-serving rulers.

"We ask just one thing of our Western partners," Nazarbayev told diplomats and dignitaries at the opening of a business conference. "We ask them to abandon the thought of transporting Western values 100 percent to Kazakhstan."

"Democracy is for us not the beginning of the road, but the end," he said.

The pro-democracy revolutions have prompted accusations from allies of Nazarbayev, including his eldest daughter, that they were the work of foreign powers- a veiled reference to the United States, which denies undue interference.

Nazarbayev, who has long argued that his country of 15 million people must achieve economic reforms before developing as a democracy, said regional stability should come first.

"The international community followed the events in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan with intensifying concern," he said.

"I am sure that no one is interested in Central Asia becoming a region torn apart by internal contradictions, when a spark of violence in one country becomes the example for a continuation in another."

Weapons Cache Claim

Since independence in 1991, and in common with the other four Central Asian states, Kazakhstan has not held an election judged free and fair by Western poll monitors.

The opposition in Kazakhstan, which has loosely united to fight the next presidential campaign, earlier on Tuesday accused the authorities of stockpiling extra weapons in readiness to use force to keep Nazarbayev in power.

For a Just Kazakhstan, the opposition bloc uniting Nazarbayev's critics from left and right, also said continued support of Central Asia's autocratic regimes by former imperial master Russia could lead to chaos.

"The authorities... are taking hectic measures to tighten the screws, toughen laws, and are hastily buying up weapons to arm Interior Ministry forces and police," the Kazakh opposition bloc said in a statement to a news conference.

"If the authorities get ready for a violent scenario... and toughen laws, this means they, including Nazarbayev, are afraid of holding fair polls," said Bulat Abilov, a bloc leader.

The bloc is led by several former Nazarbayev loyalists, including a handful of ex-ministers, and Zharmakhan Tuyakbay, who was until recently a leading light in Nazarbayev's own party but is now the opposition-backed presidential hopeful.

Police and Interior Ministry troops could not be reached for comment.

Opposition fears of a crackdown have been heightened by last month's violence in poorer neighbour Uzbekistan. The Uzbek authorities say 173 people, mainly "terrorists", died in the violence but witnesses say 500 people were killed when troops indiscriminately fired into a crowd in the town of Andizhan.

Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov