The United Nations has called on Haitians to ignore unofficial results of Sunday's presidential and legislative elections and to wait for the official results to be announced next Tuesday by the country's electoral council.

"The Provisional Electoral Council should be granted the time and political stability needed to complete its work, the results of which will then be subject to any eventual dispute from candidates, political parties and the Haitian people through legal procedures for settling the issue," the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) said in a news release last night.

"Quick counts or opinion polls are not an exact science. The population and media should not be guided by unofficial results, speculation or purported partial counts which are circulating at the moment."

On Monday Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a speedy solution to the political crisis following media reports that 12 of the 18 presidential candidates had repudiated the vote and their supporters mounted protests. He warned that worsening security would hamper efforts to fight the cholera epidemic in a country already devastated by January's earthquake.

The epidemic has killed some 1,650 people and infected over 72,000 others since it first erupted in October as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere struggles to recover from the quake, which killed 200,000 people and displaced some 1.3 million others.

MINUSTAH, with nearly 12,000 military and police personnel currently deployed around the country, has been on the ground since mid-2004 after then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide went into exile amid violent unrest.