During the official ceremony to mark the beginning of the flame's worldwide tour, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev received the torch from the Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan and then ran a short, symbolic distance with it. He then handed the flame over to Bakhtiyar Artayev, a Kazakh boxing gold medalist at the 2004 Athens Olympics
The Summer Olympic Games are due to begin in Beijing on August 8.
"I am sure that the Beijing Olympics will open a new path for the global development of sports in the 21st century," Nazarbayev said at the ceremony, which ended when a Kazakh horseman rode through a central square, the flaming torch held above him, followed by a procession of camels, horses and cheerleaders.
In total, 80 famous Kazakh athletes, cultural figures and politicians are to carry the torch along the streets of Almaty on Wednesday. The flame will then go on to Istanbul, and then on April 5 to St. Petersburg, Russia's second largest city. The flame is also due in London, Paris and San Francisco, among other cities.
The Olympic torch arrived in Almaty, Kazakhstan's former capital and its largest city, on April 1. Some 4,500 police and security agents are said to be on duty in the city, and there have been no reports of protests.
Pro-Tibetan protestors have pledged to meet the Olympic flame with demonstrations throughout its 137,000-kilometer (85,100-mile) journey. Rights groups are also expected to use the occasion to raise the issue of human rights in China, as well as the country's arms trade with Sudan.
Last Tuesday, the European Parliament's president spoke of the possibility of a boycott of the Games over China's heavy-handed response to recent protests in China.
"We must not exclude the possibility of a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. We want them [the Games] to be a success, but not at the expense of the cultural genocide of Tibetans," Hans-Gert Pottering said in an interview with the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
