INTERVIEW-Kazakh leader hints at succession plan

By Michael Stott and Maria Golovnina

ASTANA, March 28 (Reuters) - Kazakhstan's long-serving President Nursultan Nazarbayev made a rare reference to the succession on Friday, saying the time would come when he had to make way for a younger generation.

"I would like to clarify this nonsense that the first president, that is me, can stay in power for an unlimited number of terms," said Nazarbayev, 67, who has ruled Kazakhstan since it declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

"That does not mean I will be here forever," he told Reuters in an interview. Nazarbayev last won election in 2005, securing 91 percent of the vote in a poll criticised by Western observers. Parliament last year voted to allow him to stay in office for an unlimited number of terms.

Speaking at his three-year-old palace in the new capital Astana, Nazarbayev noted that Kazakhstan's next presidential election would be held in 2012, then added:

"But I have been in this job for so many years and after all I might hand it over to the next generation, so to say, when I see that we need new, fresh people...this is an electoral process".

TABOO SUBJECT

The comment was unusual because discussion of the presidential succession is a taboo topic in Kazakhstan and Nazarbayev himself never normally refers to it.