MAHMOUD ABBAS, the moderate candidate of the powerful Fatah faction, claimed a landslide victory in elections to succeed Yassir Arafat as Palestinian leader yesterday.

Exit polls put Mr Abbas on 66 per cent of the vote with his closest rival, Mustafa Barghouti, on 19.7 per cent, with a final result due today.

In an address to jubilant supporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Mr Abbas promised to put an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people. He dedicated his victory to the memory of Arafat.

He said: “There is a difficult mission ahead to build our state, to achieve security for our people, to provide a good life for our people, to give our prisoners freedom, our fugitives a life in dignity, to reach our goal of an independent state.”

The celebrations were immediate as Fatah gunmen fired into the air above Ramallah’s presidential compound, near the home of Mr Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen.

“This is the choice of the people and this means that Abu Mazen has the mandate to implement his programme,” Mohammed Shtayeh, Mr Abbas’s campaign manager, said.

The result was welcomed by President Bush, who described it as an historic day. “The United States stands ready to help the Palestinian people realise their aspirations,” said Mr Bush, who added that other countries, including Israel, must help to create peace.

Election officials last night put the turnout at 70 per cent, despite calls for a boycott by the Islamic groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

But the result was marred by a fiasco over two different lists used to count voters, which last night had already provoked a legal challenge.

Hanna Nasir, chairman of the Central Elections Commission, admitted that major problems were caused by the Palestinian parliament’s insistence that in addition to the list of

1.1 million registered voters, polling officials should also accept 700,000 Palestinians who were not registered but whose names appeared on a pre-1996 civil registry.

After thousands of complaints during the day Dr Nassir conceded that further checks would have to be carried out on the eligibility of voters on the civil registry because it was out of date and included people who had died or moved abroad.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights immediately lodged an appeal against the commission’s decision to allow the civil registry voting.

Voting had earlier been extended by two hours after accusations by election officials that Israeli soldiers had delayed voters at checkpoints. There was also confusion in east Jerusalem, where 500 of the few Palestinian voters permitted by Israel to vote inside the city arrived to find their names not on the register.

International monitors, led by the former US President Jimmy Carter, sought to find a solution. But despite the difficulties observers indicated that the vote had gone relatively smoothly across Gaza and the West Bank. The monitors also heard complaints that voters had been able to wipe off the indelible ink, allowing them to vote twice. Political factions accused Fatah of transporting supporters from one town to another to cast their vote a second time and take advantage of the confusion caused by the double list. If the special election court, established by the Palestinian Authority’s civil judiciary, decides the human rights group is sufficiently grave it could decide to void the results from individual polling stations or even the whole election. The Israeli Government has already indicated it will meet Mr Abbas and hinted at a deal to release some of the 7,000 Palestinian prisoners in its custody, but at a price.

Mr Abbas, for long in Arafat’s shadow, has shot to prominence since the death of the Palestinians’ figurehead in November. His face was everywhere yesterday, on posters across cities and villages in the West Bank and Gaza, and on leaflets being hurled from the back of Fatah vehicles touring the streets blaring out support on loudspeakers.

But he faces internal as well as external critics. In the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, a militant stronghold, refugees threatened dire consequences for any leader who backtracked on their demands for the right of return to their ancient homes in what is now Israel. Others called on Mr Abbas to restore internal law and order.

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