Related: Azerbaijan poll not up to int'l standards: OSCE observer
         EU "disappointed" with Azerbaijani parliamentary election: official 

    BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov. 7 (Xinhuanet) -- Azerbaijan's ruling party won the majority of seats in the parliament Monday in a vote European observers claimed had failed to meet international standards.

    The ruling New Azerbaijan Party won 63 seats in the 125-seat parliament with 96 percent of the votes counted, the Central Election Commission said.

    The opposition Musavat party and the Popular Front, both part of the opposition Azadliq (freedom) bloc, got four and two seats respectively.

    Independent candidates won 41 seats, the commission said.

    The results came just hours after observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other European bodies labeled the election as failing to meet international standards despite some improvements.

    "Yesterday's election did not meet a number of OSCE commitmentsand Council of Europe standards for democratic elections," Alcee Hastings, president of the OSCE's Parliamentary Assembly and special coordinator of the observers for the poll, told a press conference in Baku.

    More than 1,500 international monitored Sunday's election.

    Hastings acknowledged improvements in the pre-election period and calm voting, but noted uncertainty over key aspects of the process such as voter registration.

    Continued restrictions on the freedom of assembly marred the campaign period, he said.

    The parliamentary 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 dispersed by police who cited a ban on downtown protest.

    "The road to election was paved with good intentions and bad practices," Leo Platvoet, head of the delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, told the press conference.

    President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Haydar in 2003,has repeatedly pledged the parliamentary vote would be fair.

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

    Marie Anne Isler Beguin, head of the European Parliament delegation, welcomed the inking of voters' fingers, saying it was "a credible attempt" to guard against possible multiple voting. Enditem