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FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS INTERNATIONAL


   OCTOBER 24, 11:21 EDT

 Junta Leader Says He Won Election

 By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS
 Associated Press Writer

 ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — Junta leader Gen. Robert Guei dissolved the
commission
 overseeing Ivory Coast's presidential elections and declared himself
the winner, a senior
 Interior Ministry official said Tuesday.

 Daniel Bamba Sheik, director-general of the Interior Ministry's
territorial administration
 department, said Guei took 52.72 percent of Sunday's vote compared with
41.02 for
 opposition leader Laurent Gbagbo.

 Gbagbo's party had earlier claimed the opposition leader had won, and
his aides said party
 supporters planned to march in protest later Tuesday through Abidjan,
the commercial
 capital.

 Sunday's vote was to decide the future of this West African country,
which saw its
 reputation as a bastion of regional calm destroyed in the December coup
d'etat that brought
 Guei to power.

 Bamba Sheik blamed massive fraud and the incompetence of electoral
officials for the decision
 to disband the commission overseeing the vote.

 He accused several parties, including Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front,
of busing voters from
 Abidjan to villages in the interior in order to vote twice.

 Bamba Sheik claimed only 3.6 million voters had been registered for the
vote, down from the
 5.5 million announced by the commission before the ballot. Some 153,000
votes were nullified,
 he added.

 Electoral commission officials were not immediately available for
comment and those seen
 earlier in the day were escorted by armed security personnel and not
allowed to talk to
 journalists.

 Following Tuesday's announcement, the streets of downtown Abidjan were
virtually empty
 except for security personnel wearing riot gear.

 The vote was controversial from the beginning. The nation's two largest
political parties
 boycotted the ballot after their leaders were barred from running by
the Supreme Court.
 Gbagbo was the only political heavyweight allowed to run against the
junta leader.

 Preliminary results released around midday Monday — reflecting just a
fraction of the vote —
 showed Gbagbo with an edge over Guei. Since then, however, vote
counting appeared to
 have stopped, European Union officials said, speaking on condition of
anonymity.

 Before counting was interrupted, Gbagbo had 51.35 percent of the
126,683 ballots counted,
 compared to 40.40 percent for Guei, national electoral commission
president Honore Guie said
 Monday.

 Gbagbo's party claimed its own count showed it leading with 61 percent
to 25 percent for
 Guei with 1.1 million votes counted.

 A representative of Gbagbo's party had earlier asked Guei to accept
defeat.

 ``In developed countries, the loser recognizes his defeat ... even when
the official results
 are not completely available,'' said Gbagbo's campaign manager, Afi
Nguessan.

 In an interview broadcast on Europe 1 radio, Gbagbo urged Guei to
``hand over power'' and
 said army soldiers were also advising the military ruler to do so.

 However, some soldiers said Guei had given unspecified orders to troops
late Monday to
 ``calm the population.''

 On Monday, soldiers deployed throughout Abidjan after groups of
jubilant Gbagbo (pronounced
 BAHG-bo) supporters paraded through the streets in parts of Abidjan and
other cities.
 Soldiers used tear gas to break up a rally of Gbagbo demonstrators.

 A senior junta member, Communications Minister Henri Cesar Sama, warned
Gbagbo's
 supporters to cease their celebrations, calling the jubilation
``premature.''

 The United Nations, the Organization of African Unity, the European
Union and countries such
 as the United States and Canada withdrew election observers or funding,
saying the exclusion
 of major opponents made a free and fair election impossible.

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