Paul Kagame, Rwanda's longtime leader who won a landslide victory in last month's presidential election, the first since the 1994 genocide, is to be sworn in today with at least ten African heads of state in attendance.

Rwanda's effective strongman since 1994, the 46-year-old Kagame will take the oath of office before his peers in Kigali's largest sports stadium.

The former head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), then a Tutsi rebel movement, Kagame officially garnered 95% of the vote on August 25 in the first multi-party presidential election since the tiny central African country won independence from Belgium in 1962.

A 70-member observer team from the European Union stopped short of giving the election a clean bill of health, citing incidents of fraud and irregularities, while saying it marked an "important step" in Rwanda's democratic process.

Kagame's main challenger, Faustin Twagiramungu, rejected the results but lost a bid before the Supreme Court for fresh elections to be held, and has since acknowledged his defeat.

Preparations for the swearing-in ceremony were under way yesterday with the decorating of the road leading from Kigali's airport to Amahoro Stadium, where the ceremony is expected to start at 08:00 GMT today.

Kagame assembled some 15 000 supporters in the stadium on the night of his electoral victory.

Rwanda's Foreign Minister Charles Murigande said that ten heads of state had confirmed they would attend today's ceremony.

The guests include South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique, Malawi's Bakili Muluzi, Tanzania's Benjamin Mkapa, Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, Domitien Ndayizeye of Burundi, Ethiopia's Girma Wolde-Giorgis, Djibouti's Ismael Omar Guelleh, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Burkina Faso's Blaise Compaore.

Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) Joseph Kabila will be represented by one of his vice presidents, Arthur Z'Ahidi Ngoma, according to Murigande.

He was quoted on national radio on Wednesday night as saying that the presence of the ten heads of state was a sign that "Rwanda commands respect on the African continent".

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will be represented at the ceremony by his Special Representative for the DRC, William Swing.

The two losing presidential candidates - Twagiramungu and former minister Jean-Nepomuscene Nayinzira - who respectively scored 3,62% and 1,33% of the vote, both said yesterdaythat they had not been invited to the ceremony and that they would have attended had they been invited.

Twagiramungu, a moderate Hutu and former prime minister who was accused of promoting "ethnic divisionism" during the electoral campaign, said he had sent Kagame a telegram on Wednesday "acknowledging his victory" and calling on him "to respect his commitments".

By taking power in July 1994, Kagame's RPF put an end to the genocide, which, according to Kigali, claimed the lives of up to a million people - minority Tutsis and their Hutu sympathisers.

Kagame, who was vice president and defence minister from 1994, was elected president in 2000 by members of parliament. – Sapa-AFP.