HAITI OFFICIALS ANNUL SENATE RACE

* A Haitian Senate race was annulled because ballots, vote tallies, and ballot boxes were dumped in the streets outside an election office, but the vote tally will proceed in the other races, officials said Tuesday.

Haitians generally boycotted the vote, which was carried out over the objections of diplomats trying to broker a solution to Haiti's political crisis.

Electoral Council President Balthazar St. Fort-Line told Radio Metropole that the vote had been annulled in the province that includes the capital, Port-au-Prince.

The electoral council, dominated by supporters of the violent 1991 military coup that toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, said in a communique it had found "ballots, tally sheets, and ballot boxes scattered in the steets" outside the province's electoral headquarters. "We don't know if it was infiltration , incompetence, or something else," the communique said.

Independent radio station Tropic FM said voting station operators had emptied the ballot boxes in the street after they had tried and failed to get paid for their work.