As Mozambicans streamed to the polls today in their first free elections, hoping to finally exorcise the ghosts of a savage civil war, the main opposition leader cast the entire exercise in doubt with a last-minute announcement that he would reject the outcome.
Afonso Dhlakama, who has recast his Renamo guerrilla army as a political party and himself as the main presidential challenger, charged that fraud by the Government had cheated his party out of any chance of victory.
"These elections, with fraud arranged in advance -- no, no, no," he told reporters. "We will not approve them, and no one can force us."
In public and in meetings with foreign diplomats, Mr. Dhlakama gave no sign that he could be induced back into the elections, which the independent electoral commission said would continue on Friday as planned, with an optional third day on Saturday.
But Mr. Dhlakama renewed his pledge not to resume the war that mutilated Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony, for 16 years until a cease-fire took hold two years ago.
"The world has spent a lot of money to bring peace to Mozambique, and it doesn't want a return to hostilities," he said in an interview with a Portuguese radio station.
He told another visitor that he would instruct his party's candidates not to accept any seats Renamo won in the 250-seat Parliament, and would sit on the sidelines until the next elections in five years.
Mr. Dhlakama, suddenly the center of attention, flew into Maputo today for talks with the United Nations and other foreign donors that have paid for the election -- including $19 million to help transform Renamo, the Mozambique National Resistance, into a political party.
Some diplomats here took Mr. Dhlakama's 11th-hour declaration as a negotiating gambit from a man who fears that if he loses, his party will be shoved to the sidelines.
In recent weeks, he has demanded various guarantees of future influence beyond a role as the opposition party in a less-than-powerful Parliament. He has proposed a vice presidency for the second-ranking party, the power to appoint governors in provinces won by his party and a special status for the opposition party in executive decisions.
But three diplomats who met with him today said he seemed sincere in his decision to withdraw, even though it could not only make him politically irrelevant but also scare off foreign investors waiting for evidence of stability in Mozambique.
Mr. Dhlakama's allegations of fraud were based in part on a document, purportedly emanating from the Government campaign, that spells out plans to cheat by issuing fraudulent voter registration cards. The Government has denounced the document as a forgery, and the United Nations, which is overseeing the election, said that in the absence of other evidence, the document could not be taken seriously.
A member of the electoral commission, Manuel Frank, who is also a senior member of Renamo, said today the election was still legally valid and it would be up to Renamo whether or not to accept its seats in Parliament. Mr. Frank said about half of the 6.4 million registered voters had already cast ballots today, and based on the first day of voting, the election was "free and fair."
Across the country, in the isolated villages where most Mozambicans live, the turnout was huge as neither voters nor local political leaders had any inkling of Mr. Dhlakama's withdrawal.
Babies slung on backs, picnic lunches tied in colorful cloth, dressed in their best market-day finery, Mozambicans walked calmly to polling places along roads where, two years ago, the only traffic consisted of panicky refugees fleeing to the cities or the borders.
In Nampula, the most populous and most closely contested province, polling stations were already encircled by orderly throngs of voters by 6 A.M., an hour before voting began. Many villages were almost empty.
In contrast to Mr. Dhlakama's anger, voters seemed to savor a day of reconciliation.
Renamo and the ruling Frelimo Party, the Mozambique Liberation Front, killed up to a million people and uprooted a third of Mozambique's 15 million people. But supporters lined up side by side today without any show of acrimony.
"Renamo killed my mother, my uncle and my sister," said Albino Antonio, who lives in Nakurare, a village 50 miles southwest of Nampula that was held by the Government during the war but battered mercilessly by the rebels. "Now they are my brothers."
The campaign itself seemed astonishingly free of violence. In the town of Nampula, a sun-baked provincial capital much enlarged by the shacks of war refugees, people said it was not uncommon to see adherents of the former rival armies genially discussing the election in the streets or cafes.
Partisans on both sides volunteered their willingness to accept defeat.
"If Renamo wins, it will be a disaster, because they've always been in the bush and don't know the first thing about government," said the director of a state-owned fertilizer company, who goes by the single name of Chuni. "It will be a disaster -- but we will accept it, no problem, because we are all Mozambicans."
Ricardo da Oliviera, a former high school principal who heads Renamo's ticket in Nampula Province, said, "Even if we lose -- even if the election is not fair -- we never want to go to war again," a vow that is widely expressed and enormously popular.
Mr. Dhlakama's announcement had alarming resonance in a country haunted by the specter of Angola, another former Portuguese colony that ceased its war and held elections, only to lapse back into fierce fighting when the loser refused to accept defeat.
Mr. Dhlakama has closely studied his Angolan counterpart, Jonas Savimbi, and today he told Portuguese diplomats that he did not want to repeat the Angolan rebel's mistake -- denouncing the elections only after the official result had declared him the loser.
But unlike Angola, Mozambique is a country where the former combatants, and the population, seem genuinely drained of any will to fight. Renewed war would end the foreign aid on which Mozambique, unlike diamond- and oil-rich Angola, desperately depends.