Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev casts his ballot in Baku.

BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov. 6 (Xinhuanet) -- Azerbaijani voters startedcasting their ballots Sunday in the country's parliamentary election under close scrutiny of international observers.

    Voting started at 08:00 local time (0400 GMT) in about 5,100 polling stations across the oil-rich Caspian Sea nation to elect a new 125-member parliament, the Milli Mejlis. Voting ends at 19:00 (1500 GMT).

    At polling stations, indelible ink was applied on voters' fingers after election officials checked their documents to prevent fraud.

    Also on site were more than 1,500 observers from international bodies like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

    In Baku, Bezborodov Nikolai, a CIS observer from Russia, told Xinhua that CIS observers are inspecting polling stations at random and no fraud has been reported so far.

    Security was also tightened in the capital city.

    President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Haydar in 2003after an presidential election, has repeatedly pledged the parliamentary vote will be fair.

    He had asked the parliament to scrap a ban to allow foreign funded non-government groups to monitor the poll and to include voters' addresses in the voter list.

    Aliyev said after he voted at a polling station in a Baku school that the election is very important for the country as it embodies democracy in Azerbaijan.

    "The election will be conducted in a calm manner and the Azerbaijani society will remain stable," Aliyev said.

    The poll has been preceded by months of street protest and arrests. Opposition activists held rallies in Baku nearly every weekend in the run-up to the election. Most of them were dispersedby police who cited a ban on downtown protest. Enditem