"Kazakhstan will not have the opportunity to impose...

"Kazakhstan will not have the opportunity to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in the near future," Igor Rogov, deputy presidential chief-of-staff for judicial issues, said at a news conference in Astana. "Today we are not ready to abandon the death penalty, even for purely technical reasons," Rogov said. He noted that life imprisonment as an alternative to the death penalty is envisioned in current criminal legislation, "but has not taken effect. Its introduction has been postponed until 2003 ... Only after this measure (life in prison) is enacted, after courts get used to it and the population starts taking it as an actual alternative to the death penalty, then we will be able to consider a possible moratorium on the death penalty," Rogov said.