The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Paris

France's opposition Socialists descended into political warfare Saturday after failed presidential candidate Segolene Royal lost a vote for the party leadership to rival Martine Aubry by a razor-thin margin but refused to concede defeat.

Aubry, the mayor of Lille and architect of the 35-hour work week, was declared the winner by 42 votes out of more than 137,000 cast in a ballot by party members on Friday.

Royal, who was beaten by right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy in last year's presidential elections, accused the rival camp of vote-tampering and demanded a re-vote.

"I am not going to take this," Royal told AFP, denouncing what she called "methods from another era" for the split.

Aubry, 58, shot back that "there is no reason" for a new ballot. She appealed to the rival camp to "act responsibly or else our party's situation will only get worse."

"Everyone knows the party is not in good health," she said. "We will lose everything if were are incapable of pulling together."

The dispute pushed the already deeply-divided Socialist Party closer to a formal split and a full-blown confrontation between the leftist old guard backing Aubry and Royal's centre-left followers.

Aubry won 50.02 percent of the vote against 49.98 percent for Royal, according to official results released by the party leadership.

Outgoing leader Francois Hollande, Royal's former partner in personal life, called an emergency meeting of the party's national council for Tuesday that will likely validate the result.

The contested outcome capped weeks of bitter campaigning and dashed hopes that the Socialists could put an end to the feuding and start building a credible opposition to Sarkozy.

Aubry Royal aides charged that there had been irregularities in vote counting at party offices.