Tunisia government within a month

Tunisia's Islamist Ennahda party on Wednesday vowed to form a new government within a month as preliminary results gave it a commanding lead, but not a majority, in the Arab Spring's first election.

As coalition negotiations got under way in earnest, the biggest secular party defended its negotiations with Ennahda, saying the Islamist party was neither the devil nor the Taliban.

"No, no, no it is not the devil and we do not make pacts with the devil," Congress for the Republic (CPR) leader Moncef Marzouki told reporters in Tunis.

"One must not take them for the Taliban of Tunisia. It is a moderate part of Islam."

Banned under the regime of ousted dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, Ennahda says it models itself on the ruling AKP party in Turkey, another Muslim-majority country which, like Tunisia to date, is a secular state.

But its critics accuse the party of being moderate in public and radical in the mosques.

Ghannouchi said a preliminary vote tally of about 40 per cent made it the "natural" choice to lead the new executive, as an executive party member told AFP Ennahda has put forward its number two, Hamadi Jebali, as the next head of government.

The 62-year-old, an engineer by training and a former journalist, is a co-founder of Ennahda. A vehement opponent of Ben Ali, he spent 16 years in jail, 10 in isolation, for his political activities.

Ghannouchi has always said he had no government ambitions, and was not an election candidate.

Three days after Tunisians voted en masse for a new 217-member assembly that will rewrite the constitution, appoint a caretaker government and prepare for fresh elections, the official outcome was not yet known.

The country appeared headed for complicated coalition negotiations, with all of Ennahda's possible partners on the leftist, liberal side of the political spectrum.

But Ghannouchi said a government would be put together as soon as possible, "within no more than a month."

He also stressed the country's Arabic identity and lamented its adopted Franco-Arabic character and "language pollution".

Marzouki said the protection of civil liberties and gender equality were non-negotiatables, adding: "We are capable of negotiating with them (Ennahda), to ensure that these ideals are maintained in Tunisia without an ideological civil war, without a battle between the modernist pole and the Islamist pole."

The interim results gave a joint second place to the CPR and the Petition for Justice and Development -- a grouping backed by Hachmi Haamdi, a rich London-based businessman with close ties to Ben Ali.

The leftist Progressive Democratic Party shared the third place with Ettakatol, whose leader Mustapha Ben Jafaar Tuesday proclaimed himself willing to "assume the highest responsibility" in a new government.

Ben Jafaar told AFP that coalition discussions with Ennahda had started for the new assembly, which will also have interim powers to write laws and pass budgets.

A broad-based executive was required, he added, to avoid "polarisation between Islamists and modernists".

Ghannouchi said Ennahda was in favour of a "big, national alliance that will lead to a democratic government."

Asked about the identity of the interim president, he said: "It will be a person who had militated against the dictatorship. Nothing has been decided yet. Discussions are continuing," without saying with whom.

The new assembly will decide on the country's system of government and how to guarantee basic liberties, including women's rights, which many in Tunisia fear Ennahda would seek to diminish despite its assurances to the contrary.

Analysts say that Ennahda, even in a majority alliance, would be unable to "dictate" its programme to the assembly, having no choice but to appease its alliance partners, a moderate-minded society, and the international community on whose investment and tourism the country relies heavily.

Leftist parties may yet seek to form a majority bloc against Ennahda.

Even before the official results are known, Ennahda has sought to reassure investors of stability, and women that it will respect their equality, and said it was open to a coalition with any party "without exception".

The electoral system was designed to include as many parties as possible in drafting the new constitution, expected to take a year, ahead of fresh national polls.

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