Carter Brokers Recount in Latin Election : Dominican Republic: The former President forestalls a potentially violent confrontation over a tight vote count.

Former President Jimmy Carter successfully brokered a recount in the Dominican Republic’s disputed presidential election before the first vote count even ended Friday, forestalling a potentially violent confrontation between the government and a candidate who appeared to be losing.

Shuttling among agitated candidates as a contested vote count continued through Friday morning, Carter won the agreement of all and of the country’s independent Central Election Board to begin a painstaking, cooperative recount as soon as the present tabulation is completed, possibly sometime today.

“Any fraud or honest errors will be discovered and resolved,” Carter said, reading in Spanish from the candidates’ agreement signed by him and Froilan Tavares, president of the electoral board.

During a raucous press conference on the steps of the electoral board headquarters shortly before departing for the United States, Carter said all eight presidential contestants had agreed to a formula for resolving what had threatened Thursday night to become an explosive situation.

One-time Marxist former President Juan Bosch, 80, who continued to trail incumbent Joaquin Balaguer, 83, by a slender margin, had denounced the electoral board’s slow vote count as “a colossal fraud” by the board and Balaguer, and called on his supporters to stage massive street demonstrations.

“If Bosch had mobilized his people and Balaguer resorted to military force, the result would have been many lives lost,” said Jose Francisco Pena Gomez, the third-ranking presidential candidate, who first proposed the Carter formula and helped him to negotiate it.

Carter announced that Bosch had withdrawn his threat and agreed to a process whereby the four leading political parties will cross-check their own and the electoral board’s vote tabulations to arrive at an agreed official result. He suggested that the process could take from a few days to many.

“The sooner the better,” said Carter, who left some of his aides behind as neutral international observers of the recount. The former President said he would return when the final official result is ready to be announced.

During a question period, Carter, who had earlier given his stamp of approval to the conduct of the election and the vote counting, acknowledged that there had been complaints of minor errors which he said “can be corrected.” But he added: “Neither Professor Bosch nor any of the candidates has presented to me any evidence of fraud.”

As of Friday night, with 87% of the country’s 6,663 polling places reporting, Balaguer led Bosch by only about 12,000 votes, a difference of about one-half of 1%.

The latest count on Friday evening gave Balaguer 570,459 votes, Bosch 558,979 and Pena Gomez, 373,058.