War-scarred Sierra Leone Votes for Peace

Sierra Leoneans began queuing before dawn yesterday to vote in presidential and parliamentary elections expected to confirm the end of an atrocious civil war.

The UN's biggest peacekeeping force, 17,400 soldiers, guarded the polling stations, but the enthusiasm of the voters to make their first national elections for 25 years work made the additional security hardly necessary.

"I used to vote with my hands, I did it today with my toe," Lamin Janka, 43, whose hands were cut off during a 1999 rebel attack on Freetown, told Reuters. "This is going to be a new beginning of life after 10 years of war."

The winner is widely predicted to be the incumbent president, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, who has weathered some of his country's worst crises, including his own overthrow, an invasion of Nigerian troops to reinstate him, and British military intervention two years ago as the Revolutionary United Front tried to seize power.

He was elected in 1996 in a vote limited to parts of the country under government control. The RUF punished voters by chopping off the hands they said had cast the ballots.

The RUF, which has reinvented itself as a political party since the war was declared over in January, is expected to be resoundingly defeated.

Its candidate, Pallo Bangura, said he had no complaints about the conduct of the ballot. "The queues were so long. It was very impressive and I am very enheartened by it," he told Reuters.

"I did not see any sign of unfairness and frankly I think there is such determination from the electorate that it would be very difficult."

Mr Kabbah's main challenger is Ernest Koroma of the All Peoples Congress, which governed the country for 24 years. The winner needs 55% to avoid a run-off in a fortnight.