27805: (news) Chamberlain: Brazil backs Preval's claim to victory in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     BRASILIA, Brazil, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Brazil, whose military is leading
the United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti, said on Wednesday that the
best way to ease election tensions in the Caribbean nation would be to
declare former president Rene Preval the victor.
     "Considering the existing climate in the country, that would be the
best solution," President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's chief foreign
relations advisor, Marco Aurelio Garcia, told reporters in Brasilia.
     Garcia added that declaring Preval the winner would likely enjoy the
unanimous support of the international community, since it would prevent a
messy runoff vote from taking place. He said Brazil was worried about the
situation in Haiti and that it "feared that the situation would
deteriorate."
     "We propose that the candidates recognize Preval's victory," Garcia
said.
     Garcia's remarks were made one day after Preval, a one-time ally of
ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and opposed by the wealthy elite,
claimed that widespread fraud had prevented him from winning a first-round
victory in last week's election.
     Those allegations appeared to gain more legitimacy when hundreds of
burned and still smoldering ballots, many cast for Preval, were later found
at a garbage dump in Port-au-Prince.
     Though the Haitian government has agreed to delay publishing the final
results of the election to give Preval time to gather proof of his claims,
protests continued to rage across the poor Caribbean country of 8.5 million
people.
     Haiti has been on tenterhooks since last week's vote as concerns
swirled that election officials were manipulating the ballot to force
Preval into a March 19 runoff.
     Garcia, the Brazilian official, said Brazil would seek to work with
the provisional electoral council to find a way to resolve the stalemate
while respecting the law.
     One way the electoral council could do this, he said, would be to
choose not to recognize blank and nullified ballots, which would give
Preval an absolute majority.
     Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, has spoken by telephone in
recent days with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan to find a peaceful solution to the stalemate
in Haiti.