LUANDA, July 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Former military ruler Joao Bernardo"Nino" Vieira won a presidential runoff in Guinea-Bissau, according to provisional results reaching here from Bissau.

    Vieira received 52 percent of the vote, compared with 48 for rival Malam Bacai Sanha, said electoral commission chief Al-Hadje Malam Mane.

    Guinea-Bissau voted on Sunday to choose a new president in a run-off election between the candidate of the ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) and the former military ruler, with officials saying turnout was lowerthan the 87 percent recorded in the first-round ballot last month.

    The second-round voting pitted Malam Bacai Sanha of the ruling PAIGC party against Joao Bernardo Vieira, whose 19-year rule of Guinea-Bissau ended when he was ousted after a civil war in 1999.

    Sanha took over as caretaker president after the putsch that toppled Vieira, who subsequently left Guinea-Bissau to spend a six-year exile in Portugal.

    Although Sanha took 35 percent of the vote in last month's ballot, many observers said he was underdog in the contest with Nino, particularly after the third-placed candidate in the first-round polls, ex-president Kumba Yala, urged his supporters to backNino in the decider.

    Yala, the candidate of the main Social Renovation Party ( PRS) opposition party, had initially rejected the results that knocked him out of the leadership race, triggering protests that left fourof his young supporters dead.

    Bissau's PAIGC government accused a PRS lawmaker of being behind an assault on the country's interior ministry, that left two policemen dead, during campaigning for the run-off election.

    Guinea-Bissau's aid partners and leaders in west African capitals hope the crucial presidential polls will cap the full return to democracy after a 22-month transition period following the ouster of ex-president Yala in a bloodless coup.

    Guinea-Bissau lies on the west coast of northern Africa, bordered by Senegal to the north, Guinea to the east and south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. It includes the island of Bolama and the Bijagos Archipelago. Enditem