FREETOWN: Sierra Leone’s high-stakes presidential and parliamentary elections are likely to go ahead as planned in mid-2002, despite strong doubts about whether credible polls can be organised in such a short time.

Nearly everybody agrees this is the best chance the West African country has had to finally put 10 years of civil war and lawlessness behind it. The elections will be a key test.

Yet the path to the ballot box in the former British colony is littered with hurdles — so much so that many analysts say it may be better to postpone the vote, officially set for May 14.

“Very few people think there is enough time,” said one diplomat.

However, nobody is likely to call openly for a long delay in the country which hosts the United Nations’ biggest peacekeeping operation and is bottom of the world development league table.

President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah’s five-year term expired in February and has already been extended twice on security grounds.

Another extension would no doubt anger the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) as well as opposition politicians who have both long called for an interim government ahead of the polls in which they would also take part.

Analysts also say the international community itself, notably Britain and the United States, wish to get the elections — which Kabbah and his party are widely expected to win — out of the way quickly.

“The bottom line...is that donors also see the presidential and parliamentary elections in the spring as a major element of their exit strategy,” said a report issued this week by International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank.

“The British want to scale down their already reduced military presence and the US would like to see UNAMSIL, which is the largest and most costly peacekeeping operation in the world, downsize drastically.”

NIGHTMARE: Beside obvious security concerns in a country bloodied by one of Africa’s most brutal conflicts, the elections are poised to prove a logistical nightmare.