Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday urged his opponents to recognize his recall referendum victory and pledged dialogue even with his "most bitter enemies" to heal the country's deep political divisions.
The populist leader's foes have accused electoral authorities of rigging Sunday's vote so Chavez would win and claimed fraud in the electronic voting made it pointless for them to compete in next month's regional elections for state governors and local mayors.
International observers, led by former US President Jimmy Car-ter, have already endorsed the referendum in which 59 percent of the voters ratified Chavez in his presidency against 41 percent who sought to recall him. Many governments have also publicly backed the results.
"They are embarrassing themselves in front of the whole world ... These are absurd charges of a fraud that has not appeared anywhere and will not appear anywhere," Chavez said in a late-night broadcast. "I invite my countrymen to talk -- even to my most bitter enemies, I offer my hand."
Former army paratrooper Chavez, who was first elected in 1998 and will now serve out his term until 2006 elections, has accused his foes of being bad losers and warned them against stirring unrest in the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.
The fraud charges have inflamed tensions in the wake of the poll that pitted a nationalist president viewed by supporters as a champion of the poor against opponents who call him a bullying dictator.
The opposition has called for the electoral authority to be replaced and the automated voting system overhauled.
"This National Electoral Council and voting system ... do not create the right context for participation in any electoral process, that's ruled out," said Jesus Torrealba, spokesman for the opposition Democratic Coordinator coalition.
Chavez foes control the governorships of seven of Venezuela's 23 states and many of the 337 mayor's posts, including metropolitan Caracas. An opposition boycott of the regional elections could concede these posts to pro-Chavez candidates.
Seeking to clear up the fraud charges, electoral authorities and observers from the Organization of American States and the US-based Carter Center were reviewing a final sample audit of the vote. The audit result would probably be announced over the weekend, officials said.
A top Carter Center envoy said on Thursday the check was expected to confirm that Chavez had won. Carter said earlier this week that observers had seen no evidence of fraud.
Opposition leaders who initially demanded the audit refused to take part because they said it was not stringent enough.
Opposition leaders say identical tallies of pro-recall "Yes" votes registered at some polling stations indicate the voting machines may have been rigged to limit the anti-Chavez vote.
But Carter Center experts said the vote "cap" theory was unfounded and that the identical vote clusters were simply a mathematical phenomenon.
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