Mauritanian president re-elected

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania -- The president who has led this Saharan nation for the past 19 years, moving it to close ties with Washington and Israel, won re-election, his government declared Saturday. The top challenger, who was backed by Islamic hard-liners, emerged from hiding and claimed the vote was a fraud.

President Maaoya Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya's victory ensured that Mauritania will remain a rare ally in the region of both Israel and the United States.

After all votes were tallied, the Interior Ministry declared Taya the first-round winner with 67 percent of Friday's vote. The results must still be validated by the courts.

His strongest competitor among five challengers, fundamentalist-backed Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla, trailed with 19 percent, the Interior Ministry said.

To avoid a runoff, Taya needed support from 50 percent voters in a nation that straddles Arab and African worlds on the edge of the Sahara.

The country has never seen a peaceful and democratic transfer of power since independence from France in 1960. Taya himself seized control in a 1984 coup, overthrowing Haidalla, then a military dictator.

Taya's veiled and caftaned supporters took to the sun-baked and trash-strewn streets of the capital to celebrate Saturday's results.

Waving scarves, they honked horns and craned out of car windows to wave at the longtime leader's posters and cheer.

"Here we have tranquility and security ... the future looks good for Mauritania," declared Mohamed Ould N'Diak, a civil servant in blue robe and turban, and like many of Mauritania's governing class, an Arab.

Haidalla, an Arab like Taya, went into hiding as soon as polls closed Friday, fearing detention after security forces abruptly arrested, then released, him on election eve.

He emerged a day later, however, to tell reporters that while he still feared arrest, "the captain can't abandon a sinking ship."

The opposition candidate gathered with two other challengers to denounce the vote as an "electoral masquerade" that they would challenge in Mauritania's highest court.

From hiding, Haidalla and other opposition figures denounced the election, and demanded a new one.

"The fraud was flagrant, and there has been intimidation for weeks," Haidalla campaign spokeswoman Hindou Gueye said, promising a legal challenge, but no violence.

"We are a peaceful movement," she said.

Taya's regime rejected European Union election observers, and was accused of closing election venues to both local and international monitors.

Security forces put up checkpoints around the presidential palace and other government buildings as the votes were counted, just six months after Taya withstood a coup attempt his administration blamed on Muslim hard-liners.

Both leading candidates accused the other of plotting to take power by force or by fraud, regardless of the true vote count.

Taya called for calm, promising in a brief, nationally televised address that "the people will enjoy democracy and stability."

Nouakchott, a city of sand-colored low buildings and donkey carts, remained at peace by nightfall Saturday. A handful of shop owners closed up, fearing violence.

"We're not against the president -- he's against us," insisted 35-year-old Hashem Diop, an unemployed black African in one of Noaukchott's poorer districts.

Like Arabs, black Africans make up 30 percent of Mauritania's 2.9 million people. Africans here are generally poorer, and complain of discrimination by their lighter-skinned compatriots.

Those of mixed-race make up the rest of the population in the north African country, which didn't officially outlaw slavery until 1981.

Friday's other candidates include a man of mixed race whose grandfather had labored as a slave to Arabs.

"We have no power to earn money, or to live. We have no freedoms," Diop, the unemployed man, said bitterly after results were announced. "Only the rich are for the president, because if he falls, they fall with him."

The opposition charges all previous elections under Taya have been fraudulent. Haidalla during the campaign appeared to have backing from a wide range of voters, including moderates weary of Taya's long and restrictive rule.

Isolated as a supporter of Saddam in the Gulf War, Taya's administration shifted political alliances dramatically in the mid-1990s.

In 1999, Mauritania became one of only three countries in the Arab League to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel.

That same year, Mauritania broke ties with Iraq, despite the common Baath Party membership of many Mauritania leaders and Saddam's regime.

Taya's government banned anti-U.S. rallies earlier in the U.S.-led war in Iraq, and blocked what it claimed were fundamentalist attempts to use mosques to recruit fighters against the Untied States.

In Israel, Shalom Cohen, deputy director of the Middle East division at that country's Foreign Ministry, congratulated Taya on his proclaimed victory, calling him a "visionary and a courageous leader."

In the 22-nation Arab League, only Mauritania has kept full diplomatic relations with Israel during three years of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Cleric Mohamed Hassan Dedaw, who spoke frequently to crowds during Haidalla's campaign rallies and appeared with the challenger, told The Associated Press he saw Mauritania's ties with Israel as unjustifiable.

"During this situation where Israel is killing Palestinians and ruining their homes, I can't see why we should have relations with them," said Dedaw, who was jailed for four months during this U.S.-Iraq war.