Deby re-elected president of Chad

N'DJAMENA, Chad -- Idriss Deby has been comfortably re-elected as president of Chad in a poll described by political opponents as a "masquerade" amid accusations of fraud.

Official results released on Monday showed Deby won the mandate to rule Chad for another five years with 67 percent of the vote in the first round, widely outstripping his nearest rival.

Some 4.6 million Chadians were registered to vote, including more than half a million living abroad -- mostly in Sudan -- and voter turnout was more than 80 percent.

"We welcome the maturity of the voters and above all thank them for trusting us," Deby's campaign director, David Houdeingar, told state radio shortly after the results were announced.

But the opposition is alleging massive fraud during the May 20 poll and is threatening to call for an annulment.

However, a team of foreign observers said last week that polling had taken place "without major problems or intimidation."

The closest among Deby's six challengers was Ngarledjy Yorongar, an outspoken critic of the president's oil policies, who took 13.9 percent of the vote.

Yorongar, whose score was better than many had predicted, refused to concede defeat and accused Deby -- a Muslim from the partly Arab north -- of widespread irregularities in his stronghold.

"There are now two heads of state. Idriss Deby has been elected through fraud in the north, Yorongar is elected legitimately by the people of Chad," the former Deby aide, who comes from the largely Christian and Animist south, told Reuters.

Deby based his re-election campaign on a $3.7 billion project to pump oil from south, where a consortium led by ExxonMobil hopes to begin exports in 2003 via a pipeline through Cameroon to the Atlantic.

The World Bank, which is backing the project, says it could increase government income by 40 to 50 percent by 2004, enabling it to improve services and reduce poverty in the landlocked country of just over seven million people. Gross domestic product in Chad is currently around $240 per person.

Deby, 49, seized power with a coup in 1990 and went on to win the first multi-party presidential vote in 1996.

His rule has been marked by relative stability -- despite uprisings in remote Sahara desert mountains populated by Arabs and in the jungles of the black African south.