HUMALA FACING RUNOFF IN TIGHT PERU PRESIDENTIAL VOTE

LIMA, Peru -- The polls have closed and the ballot count is underway.
But Peruvians will have to wait at least a month until they know who
will be their next president.

With more than 80% of the votes tallied Monday, Ollanta Humala, 43, a
retired army officer supported by many of the country's indigenous
and mixed-race poor, led with 30.3%, Peru's election authority said.
Alan Garcia, 56, a center-left former president, was second with
24.9%. Conservative congresswoman Lourdes Flores, 46, was close with
24%. No candidate had the majority needed for an outright victory. A
runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held in late May or early June.

Humala was endorsed by Hugo Chvez, Venezuela's militantly anti-U.S.
president. He has pledged to renegotiate the contracts of foreign
mining and oil companies, rewrite the constitution to take away
powers from the ruling classes and legalize farming of coca, the
plant used to make cocaine. He has promised to bring education,
health care and potable water to impoverished rural areas. More than
50% of Peru's population lives in poverty.

Humala also has faced allegations of human rights abuses and
killings, which he denies, as an army commander when Peru fought the
Shining Path insurgency of the 1980s and early 1990s.

In an interview Monday with the Venezuelan-based TV station Telesur,
Humala accused his opponents in Peru of distorting his message.

Flores and Garcia vow to generally maintain free-market policies that
have generated economic growth averaging 5.5% the past four years but
haven't created enough jobs for poor Peruvians.

Flores, an attorney who consistently led Garcia in opinion polls
before Sunday's election, had been edged out of a 2001 runoff by
Garcia, a silver-tongued orator. Alejandro Toledo, the incumbent
president who by law can't run for a second consecutive term, beat
Garcia in that runoff.

The national elections director, Magdalena Chu, said Monday that her
office would complete vote-counting on Friday but that final official
results might not be known for two weeks after that.