President Seen as Kazakh De Gaulle

Week after week, an 83-year-old Frenchman meets with President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan to offer him the same advice: Take power.

Alexei A. Moskovich, Moscow-born but French-raised, has been an author, a soldier and the vice mayor of Paris. Before becoming one of Nazarbayev’s top advisers, Moskovich had also advised Gen. Charles de Gaulle.

For Nazarbayev’s press team, that tie to the late French ruler is a minor public relations coup: They are struggling to portray Nazarbayev as a Central Asian De Gaulle, whose enlightened despotism will lead his country through economic and political crises to European-style prosperity. And so, overnight, Moskovich has leaped onto the pages of Kazakhstan’s newspapers.

“I think Nazarbayev and De Gaulle have very much in common,” he said during an interview at his government-provided home--a heavily guarded former Communist Party dacha across the street from former Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev’s old dacha.

“Mr. Nazarbayev has only one fault: He is too humane. You can often see it. When I tell him to take stern measures, he says, ‘How can I be stern with my people? They are my people!’ And I say, ‘Gen. de Gaulle could be stern with his people for their own good!’ ”

Moskovich vigorously defended Nazarbayev as the only man in the world capable of ruling Kazakhstan.

Moskovich insisted that Saturday’s referendum to extend Nazarbayev’s presidential term through Dec. 1, 2000, will be more democratic than a contested presidential election in 1996.