Preval to be declared Haiti winner

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Officials of Haiti's interim government and electoral council announced early today they have reached agreement to declare front-runner Rene Preval the winner of Haiti's presidential elections.

"We have reached a solution to the problem," said Max Mathurin, president of the Provisional Electoral Council. "We feel a huge satisfaction at having liberated the country from a truly difficult situation."

Part of the controversy came after thousands of ballots, official electoral bags and other materials from the Feb. 7 elections were found in a dump north of the capital.

Some officials said the ballots may have been left there by someone seeking to discredit the elections aimed at installing a new government in the wake of a bloody rebellion that toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004.

But supporters of Preval, who took to the streets to protest alleged fraud they said was denying their candidate a first-round victory, said the dumped election materials was evidence. The discovery of the dumped ballots fueled the protests after they were first announced on Haitian TV Tuesday night.

The interim government said an investigation has been launched.

"We are looking closely at specimens of the ballots found at the dump, to check whether these are real ballots," said Michel Brunache, chief of staff to interim President Boniface Alexandre.

Associated Press journalists saw thousands of ballots, some marked for Preval, deep in the dump Wednesday, along with a vote tally sheet and four bags meant to carry returns from the elections. Three of the bags were signed by presidents of local election bureaus.

The discovery troubled U.N. officials because the bags were not supposed to be thrown out.

"They're supposed to be kept," U.N. official Catherine Sung, an electoral adviser who works at the main vote tabulation center, told the AP.

Shown photographs of the signed bags, Sung said they were meant to contain annulled and blank votes. The journalists also saw a green tally sheet of votes, but U.N. officials said that was not important because it was a copy of the original given to political party representatives.