Kagame wins 95 percent of the presidential vote

Incumbent President Paul Kagame stormed to a landslide victory on Monday in Rwanda's first multiparty presidential poll with 95.05 percent of the votes, the National Electoral Commission announced.

"The electoral commission is pleased to announce Paul Kagame as the winner," Chrysologue Karangwa, president of the commission, told reporters on Tuesday.

The commission, which certified the final results, said runner-up Faustin Twagiramungu received 3.62 percent of the votes and the third candidate, Jean-Nepomuscene Nayinzira, secured 1.33 percent.

Some 96.5 percent of the country's 3.9 million registered voters took part in the election, the first presidential poll since Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Kagame, 45, ran on the ticket of the Rwandan Patriotic Front party. He termed his win "a giant step" in the democratisation of the country and added: "Our victory sends a message to the world that Rwanda is on the right path."

However, Twagiramungu charged there was voter intimidation and vowed to challenge the result at the Supreme Court. "Why should I applaud this election when there was threatening, harassment and insulting of my supporters during the campaign period," he said.

His spokesman, Ismail Mbonigaba, added: "Many of candidate Twagiramungu's supporters have been submitted to political torture in order to force them to leave his camp."

In the run up to the polls, civil society, the electoral commission, and political parties that support Kagame accused Twagiramungu of ethnic "divisionism", a sensitive charge given the genocide, in which at least 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed.

However, an election observer group made up of members of parliament from Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and the Amani Forum, endorsed the poll.

"We conclude that the result of the August 25, 2003 presidential election is legal and credible and does reflect the will of the Rwandan people," Mwitila Shumina, the forum's head of delegation, said.

Around 70 EU observers as well as dozens from the African Union and countries such as Canada, Norway and Switzerland monitored the vote.

Two Hutu candidates challenged Kagame, a Tutsi. Analysts said the margin of Kagame's victory was a sign that Rwanda's long-standing ethnic differences were steadily fading away.

"This is definitely a sign that Rwandans have started resenting the issue of ethnicity. Rwanda is beginning to enjoy the fruits of unity and reconciliation," one Kigali-based diplomat said.