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TBILISI - Georgia's opposition called for its supporters to take to the streets Sunday after a disputed exit poll showed incumbent Mikheil Saakashvili winning in the first round of a snap presidential vote.
Saakashvili's campaign team predicted victory, but main opposition challenger Levan Gachechiladze said in televised comments that he had won the poll.
He called on "all Georgia to come together at 2:00 pm (1000 GMT) at (Tbilisi's central) Rike park tomorrow in order to keep our victory and to celebrate our victory."
Gachechiladze said the exit poll had been falsified and that "we actually won in almost every precinct, according to our information."
The exit poll, based on interviews with more than 7,000 people, found Saakashvili was set to win 53.8 percent, just crossing the 50-percent barrier for victory in one round of voting.
Gachechiladze, got 28.3 percent, according to the poll.
"This clearly indicates the elections were successful and the next president of Georgia is Mikheil Saakashvili," the incumbent's campaign spokesman Davit Bakradze told AFP. "We call on all our opponents to accept the results of this election."
Cheers broke out in Saakashvili's headquarters in the capital Tbilisi and supporters danced with red and white Georgian flags to the pounding beat of Saakashvili's campaign song.
Gachechiladze accused Saakashvili of having "started a party to sell his victory to the voters."
Preliminary official results were expected to start coming in during the night. If no one candidate wins 50 percent, the two frontrunners must square off in a second round two weeks later.
Opposition leaders said the exit poll could not be trusted, arguing the four television channels paying for the poll were pro-government -- something the poll's organisers denied.
Saakashvili, 40, faced six challengers Saturday in the biggest test of his authority since he swept to power in the 2003 Rose Revolution.
He called the election a year early in response to violent clashes between police and protestors in November -- violence that badly dented his image as one of the ex-Soviet Union's leading democratic reformers.
At Saakashvili's headquarters, one backer, Nana Tsiladze, 55, said she was content with the exit poll showing, even if Saakashvili's support appeared to have plummeted since the Rose Revolution.
"It should have been higher, but we are happy with it. I think everything will be OK in Georgia now," she said.
But the opposition claimed there were multiple violations of electoral procedures.
"We have the problems we expected. We have seen many serious violations," another opposition leader, Tina Khidasheli, told AFP. A Central Elections Commission spokesman denied this, saying voting was "proceeding in a calm atmosphere without any serious violations."
Georgians -- including five of the six presidential challengers -- overwhelmingly back Saakashvili's push to end centuries of Russian dominance and to integrate with the West.
Yet many are disenchanted with Saakashvili, who says the November crackdown and subsequent nine-day state of emergency had prevented a coup plot by billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili, a candidate in Saturday's election who received 6.2 percent of the vote, the exit poll found.
Hundreds of foreign election observers were deployed to monitor the vote.
A report by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was expected Sunday.
Washington, the European Union and former imperial master Russia are watching closely, mindful of Georgia's growing strategic importance.
Major US-backed oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea to Turkey run through Georgia, bypassing Russia to the north and Iran to the south.
Saakashvili has also defied Russian pressure in applying for NATO membership.
In a non-binding referendum also held Saturday, 61 percent of voters backed the country joining NATO, the exit poll showed. Seventeen percent opposed membership in the military alliance, while 22 percent refused to answer pollsters.
Moscow punished Georgia's pro-Western course with sweeping economic sanctions in 2006 and also supports armed rebels who control two separatist regions of Georgia -- Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
- AFP /ls
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