HARARE, March 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - African nations rallied around Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe Thursday after his presidential election win, denounced by the opposition and the West as flawed and fundamentally unfair, news agencies reported.

The 78-year-old Mugabe, who has held power since independence from Britain in 1980, is facing a sharp split in world response to the controversial hard-fought vote.

Turnout across the southern African country was an estimated 66 percent in an election fraught by violence, intimidation and intense legal wrangling over civic rights and electoral rules. Mugabe kept a low profile after the announcement of his win, having yet to claim victory and making no public appearances.

Meanwhile, observers from Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, and South Africa, Zimbabwe's most powerful neighbor, both held back on criticism.

The Organization of African Unity (OAU) observer team in Zimbabwe announced that "in general the elections were transparent, credible, free and fair," reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

With a statement due Thursday, March 14, Nigerian presidency sources said the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo would urge Europe and the United States to accept the results. "It seems the elections were not perfect but they reflected the will of the people. The people there are pretty divided," a presidency official told AFP.

Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, another long-serving leader, said in a message to Mugabe: "Your victory and that of ZANU-PF is a testimony of the confidence and high esteem the people of Zimbabwe hold in you." However, presidential challenger Morgan Tsvangirai refused to accept the results of the elections describing it as “massively rigged”.

"The people of Zimbabwe know better," said Tsvangirai, who according to official results announced Wednesday got 42 percent of the vote against 56 percent for Mugabe. "This election... does not reflect the true will of the people of Zimbabwe," lamented Tsvangirai.

In another development, observers warned the result could spark fresh violence in a nation that saw two years of political violence, targeting mainly opposition supporters, and whose economy is suffering.

However, Tsvangirai urged his supporters not to be provoked into confrontation over the polling results. Tsvangirai called an immediate popular consultation on the results, complaining of "state-sponsored terrorism" against his supporters, the "insidious disenfranchisement" of voters in urban opposition strongholds and intimidation in rural areas by Mugabe's ZANU-PF party that offered "unfettered opportunities" to rig the outcome. "There is a massive consultation taking place and (the people) will have to decide what to do. They are the ones who have been cheated," he said.

Within the same context, international opinion is becoming increasingly divided about Mugabe's victory. Western nations, who have made Zimbabwe independence hero a pariah and slapped him with personal sanctions, denounced the result and said more sanctions could be on the way.

The U.S. and Britain led international condemnation of the result, in contrast to some African countries who welcomed it. "We do not recognize the outcome of the election because it is flawed," U.S. President George W. Bush said, while his secretary of state warned Washington was still mulling its response, BBC’s online news service reported.

Former colonial power Britain said Mugabe held on to power through a "systematic campaign of violence and intimidation." British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the campaign had been implemented over a period of months "to achieve one outcome - power at all costs. It is no surprise this outcome has now been achieved."

However, New Zealand's Foreign Minister Phil Goff said the Commonwealth, which could not decide on imposing sanctions ahead of the elections in a row over observers, was unlikely to reach a consensus after South Africa and Nigeria appeared to accept the result.

Meanwhile, rights watchdog Amnesty International said it was "gravely concerned" about the high risk of post-election violence. As the results were being announced early Wednesday, security forces were on high alert.

Police set up roadblocks to search cars entering downtown Harare, while about 100 heavily armed soldiers surrounded offices of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change in the second city of Bulawayo.

Political violence has claimed at least 33 lives, mostly those of opposition supporters, since the start of the year, according to rights groups.

For his part, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appealed for calm and said that the world body was undecided over what to do next. "Some observers have said it was not free and fair, others have indicated that it was free and fair; I need to get a much more definitive assessment," he said