20100703
reuters

CONAKRY (Reuters) - The second-placed party in Guinea's presidential vote has said it will challenge some poll results after provisional figures put veteran opposition leader Alpha Conde behind former Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo.

The two will go head to head in a July 18 run-off for the presidency of the world's biggest bauxite exporter after the election commission said Diallo won the first round with 39.72 percent, ahead of Conde on 20.67 percent but short of an overall majority.

"We have already lodged some appeals, and we are preparing others for Monday," Moustapha Naite, deputy communications director of Conde's Assembly of Guinean People (RPG), said on Saturday.

The RPG said it would challenging some, but not all, the results after complaining that the lack of results from about 150 polling stations in the province of Haute Guinea and fraud in two districts in the capital had favoured its rivals.

Some analysts had earlier said they expected the publication of results to lead to trouble, but the streets of Conakry were quiet on Saturday.

Candidates have eight days from the publication of results to contest them in the Supreme Court, which then has three days to make its ruling.

Even if they are overturned, these results are unlikely substantively to affect the result of the first round of voting, which took place in over 8,000 polling stations.

The poll has been billed as the best chance for the West African state, the biggest exporter of aluminium ore bauxite, to end over half a century of authoritarian and military rule since it won independence from France in 1958.