NOUAKCHOTT - Mauritania's opposition has decided to present candidates in a presidential election on July 18, a senior official opposed to a military regime said Monday.
"The leaders have decided to take part, whatever their grievances about the way in which decisions were made," anti-putsch lawmaker Khalil Ould Teyeb said.
Mauritania's transitional government on Sunday endorsed a pact to overcome the west African country's political crisis sparked by a coup last August and set the presidential election for July 18.
The military regime, led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, initially set the election date for June 6 and the general resigned in order to be a candidate at the polls.
But that led to weeks of political crisis in the west African desert nation and to international mediation, when much of the opposition decided to boycott the presidential poll.
Agreements were gradually reached last week and ousted president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi on Friday signed a decree appointing a transitional government then formally stepped down by "voluntary resignation."
The new transitional government consists of equal numbers of ministers who opposed the military coup and of politicians who backed the army last August, at the expense of Mauritania's first democratically elected leader.
Ould Tayeb was speaking for the National Front for the Defence of Democracy (FNDD) when he announced that the FNDD would put up a candidate later Monday, and other political movements expressed a readiness to accept the July 18 date for all their reservations.
Ahmed Ould Daddah, who leads the Rally of Democratic Forces, and the head of the Islamist party Tewassoul, Jemil Ould Mansour, both lodged their files as presidential candidates on Sunday night, their aides said.
Ould Daddah came a close second to Ould Cheikh Abdallahi in the election of March 2007.
