YEREVAN (Reuters) - Armenia, its image dented by what observers said were flawed elections in 1995 and 1996, badly needs Monday`s presidential poll to be clean to boost its standing with the West, diplomats said on Friday. The landlocked former Soviet republic was held up as a model for democratic reform in the early 1990s, after gaining independence from Moscow in 1991. But its reputation was damaged by the 1995 and 1996 elections, in which foreign observers reported irregularities. After the 1996 vote, then President Levon Ter-Petrosyan sent tanks and troops against protesters alleging he rigged the vote to stay in power, further worsening Armenia`s standing abroad. Ter-Petrosyan resigned last month under pressure from detractors angered by his concessions to neighbouring Azerbaijan in the long conflict between the two countries over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Western aid, especially from the United States, threw Armenia a lifeline when the economy collapsed and the threat of famine loomed earlier this decade. A good image would help Armenia have its case heard in the West over the conflict with the Azeris, now 10 years old. Armenia is temporarily being run by a caretaker government under Prime Minister Robert Kocharyan, an election front-runner. His main rival, Armenia`s ex-Soviet leader Karen Demirchyan, has accused Kocharyan supporters of using intimidation, bribery and unfair methods in the pre-election campaign. Kocharyan, who led the charge to oust Ter-Petrosyan, has denied the charges and says the election will be fair. Opinion polls suggest Kocharyan trails Demirchyan. They and ex-prime minister Vazgen Manukyan, who says he was the genuine winner of the 1996 election, are the only candidates with a realistic chance of chance of going into a second round vote, to be held in two weeks if no one wins outright on Monday. Political observers say a second round is likely. Three hundred foreign monitors will fan out across the mountainous country of four million. They say they will be looking at preventing the abuses that occurred in 1996.