Haiti poll marred by accusations

Twelve of the 18 candidates for Haiti president, including two of the front-runners, demanded the vote on Sunday be scrapped, accusing the ruling party of massive fraud and election-rigging.

The candidates, including favorites Mirlande Manigat and pop singer Michel Martelly, issued a joint declaration denouncing "a conspiracy between the government and the Provisional Electoral Council to steer the elections to benefit the candidate of the party in power."

"There not only has been fraud, it is an utter scandal, the vote may as well have been kidnapped," said a spokesperson for 70-year-old former first first lady Mirlande Manigat, leading pre-election opinion polls.

Manigat, who would be Haiti's first female leader if elected, did not flesh out her allegations but previously accused backers of ruling party candidate Jude Celestin of hoarding 500,000 fake ballots.

Campaigning has been marred by deadly political clashes, alleged assassination attempts, anti-UN riots over the growing cholera outbreak, and claims that widespread vote-rigging will render the results null and void.

Authorities banned motorbike traffic and alcohol sales on election day as security was stepped up with an international force of 3,200 UN police and 9,000 Haitian personnel seeking to keep the peace.

Despite the apparent chaos, Edmond Mulet, the Guatemalan diplomat who heads the UN peacekeeping mission MINUSTAH, was earlier optimistic the crucial elections to find a successor to President Rene Preval would be a success.

"In general everything is going well, everything is peaceful," Mulet told AFP on a tour of Leogane, a town near the capital Port-au-Prince 90 percent destroyed by January's earthquake, which killed 250,000 people.

Some 1.3 million people displaced by the massive earthquake which struck Haiti live in squalid tent cities that cling to the vertiginous slopes of the capital - hundreds of thousands more inhabit sprawling slums such as the notoriously violent Cite Soleil.