20091224

STONE TOWN, Zanzibar (Reuters) - A rapprochement between Zanzibar's ruling party and the opposition bodes well for a more peaceful election next year on the archipelago where ballots have often turned violent, the president has said.

Polls on the semi-autonomous islands off Tanzania were marred by bloodshed and allegations of vote rigging in 2000 and 2005, and three sets of reconciliation talks between the two main political parties had previously stalled.

Officials from the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party and opposition Civic United Front (CUF) are cagey about the details of any deal, but a historic handshake between their two leaders last month looked to be a step in the right direction.

Speaking to Reuters in Stone Town on the sidelines of a democracy conference on Tuesday, President Amani Karume said both sides had joined the talks out of good will and were doing their best to avoid any turmoil at the next election, which is expected at the end of October 2010.

"Unfortunately during the previous elections we didn't have such arrangements as we do now. There was a lot of suspicion amongst the different political parties here and especially the CCM and CUF leadership, members and so on," Karume said, adding that any repeat of the poll violence would be a "catastrophe".

Stone Town, Zanzibar's capital, is an opposition stronghold where bunting in the CUF party colours is strewn across a jigsaw of narrow 19th century streets and alleyways.

While dominant in the capital, Maalim Seif Sharif Hamad's party's real heartland is the more remote northern island of Pemba, where many of its supporters are unofficially boycotting election registration.

The Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) says 41 percent of some 550,000 eligible voters have registered so far, but that only a third have in Pemba. A second and final round of registration will conclude in April.