Mexico conservative says recount confirms vote win

MEXICO CITY, Aug 15 (Reuters) Mexican conservative Felipe Calderon has said a partial recount in a fiercely contested election has confirmed his victory and he is confident a top court will now declare him president-elect Calderon, who broke several days of silence in a bitter fight over the July 2 election result, said yesterday no serious irregularities had been found in the 9 percent of ballot boxes included in the recount, which ended on Sunday.

''Not one significant anomaly was found,'' Calderon said. ''On the contrary, it ratifies ... that we won the elections.'' Mexico's top electoral court is studying the results to see if there was any evidence of the massive fraud alleged by the losing left-wing candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

It has to formally declare the winner by Sept. 6 but Calderon said he hoped to get the nod in the next two weeks.

Lopez Obrador says the recount showed that tens of thousands of votes were miscounted or are simply missing from polling stations.

He wants all 41 million votes counted again and warned on Sunday he would extend a campaign of civil resistance if the court ruled in Calderon's favor to stop him taking office.

''The confrontation, the post-electoral crisis, is going to get worse,'' said Gerardo Fernandez, spokesman for Lopez Obrador's Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD. ''We have made clear we will not be pushed around.'' Calderon said he would not back down and insisted a total recount was unnecessary. The official result from the July election gave him a winning margin of about 244,000 votes, or 0.58 of a percentage point.

Calderon has kept a low profile recently, preferring to use senior aides in the political battle while trying to cut deals behind the scenes to build support for his economic reforms program.

For the last two weeks, thousands of Lopez Obrador's supporters have camped in Mexico City's main square and along its central avenue Reforma to protest the results and demand a total recount.

Last week they briefly blocked access to the stock exchange, foreign owned banks and the finance ministry.

Reuters PDS VP0445