Moscow/Baku, October 15 , SPA -- Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev swept thepolls to secure another five-year rule over oil-rich Caspian state onWednesday in a vote boycotted by the only real opposition, according to dpa. Aliyev, son of the post-Soviet state's former strongarm ruler,grabbed over 80 per cent of the vote, according to the first exitpolls Wednesday. Authorities said there had been a high turnout, despite reports byEuropean election monitors of widespread apathy. About 64.9 per cent of the country's 4.8 million voters had casttheir ballot by the close of polling at 7:00 (1400 GMT), the centralelection committee said. A thousand international observers were watching the voteWednesday, including near 400 from the OSCE, which will publish itsassessment Thursday. The only intrigue as the Central Asian nation voted Wednesday washow Aliyev would keep up his balancing act between Moscow andWashington, as both increase their jostling over Azerbaijan's energyresources after Russia's war with US-ally Georgia in August. Azerbaijan is key to Washington's policy of securing Caspian Seaoil and gas through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, bypassingRussia. And it has become even more of a geo-strategic imperative amidfears that transit routes through Georgia are unsafe. US VicePresident Dick Cheney spent nearly three times as long on a visit toBaku last month as with other allies in the region. Yet even before the war in Georgia, Russian President DmitryMedvedev made for Baku to lobby for energy monopoly Gazprom to win acontract that would kill US-sponsored plans for the Nabucco pipeline,a new direct link from Europe to the Caspian basin's energy wealth. Azerbaijan's oil riches have yielded one of the world's fastest-growing economies, with Aliyev reaping praise for infrastructureprojects amid an astounding growth rate of over 34 per cent in 2006 -the latest year to provide statistics - that have been felt by all. The six contestants joining him in Wednesday's ballot were seen asmere place cards after the only opposition candidates who could haveprovided a ghost of a challenges declared a boycott of the vote. Pre-election debating, which went ahead without Aliyev, barelydented state television coverage of the national leader, andpollsters have reported widespread apathy in the face of the vote. The OSCE's election observation mission to Baku said in a reportthis week that the "perceived lack of genuine competition" had dulledpublic interest. Aliyev has favoured the West's energy interests in recent yearswhile remaining on neutral terms with Moscow, but the fight overGeorgia's separatist regions two months ago could force a shake up. Azerbaijan is locked in its own frozen conflict with neighbouringArmenia with which it fought a bloody war in the early 1990s overNagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian enclave that has remainedunder Yerevan's control since a 1994 ceasefire. Analysts say Russia's venture into Georgia could not but raise thequestion of whether Moscow, a traditional ally of Armenia's, wouldintervene if tensions to protect its interests in another area. For now, Russia has become the primary broker alongside regionalpower Turkey in a new round of negotiations to resolve the conflict.--SPA www.spa.gov.sa/598187