U.N. tells Haitians to wait for final vote

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UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- The United Nations Wednesday urged Haitians to ignore unofficial results from the country's elections and wait for the official tally to be announced next week.

"The Provisional Electoral Council should be granted the time and political stability needed to complete its work, the results of which will then be subject to any eventual dispute from candidates, political parties and the Haitian people through legal procedures for settling the issue," the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti said in a release Tuesday night.

"Quick counts or opinion polls are not an exact science. The population and media should not be guided by unofficial results, speculation or purported partial counts which are circulating at the moment."

Haiti's presidential and legislative elections Sunday were chaotic with two-thirds of the 18 presidential candidates saying the whole process was so rife with fraud the results should be tossed.

The final tallies are to be announced next Tuesday by the country's electoral council.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a quick end to the electoral crisis, saying it threatens to destabilize the poverty-stricken Caribbean island that has been slow to recover from a punishing earthquake last January and now is dealing with a deadly cholera epidemic.

The United Nations has had nearly 12,000 military and police personnel deployed across Haiti since mid-2004 after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide went into exile amid violent unrest.