Haitian radio reported that demonstrators in the southern town of Miragoane had erected barricades to protest against the presence of electoral registration officers they accuse of being fraudulent government lackeys.

Health officials said at least 1,344 people had died from the worsening cholera epidemic that has ravaged the country since mid-October -- a rise of 94 from a day earlier. More than 57,000 cases have now been confirmed.

Amid fears the disease could spread more quickly in an election environment when people have to move and congregate, four of the 19 presidential candidates published a letter this weekend demanding the polls be put on hold.

"We are calling on the authorities to push back the date of the elections, to establish and publish a battle plan against the cholera epidemic that is threatening the life of all Haitians," wrote Josette Bijou, Gerard Blot, Garaudy Laguerre and Wilson Jeudy, all outsiders in the poll.

But former prime minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis, a leading candidate, told a press conference in Port-au-Prince Monday that the elections must go ahead as planned so President Rene Preval leaves office as scheduled on February 7.

"That's why it's necessary to hold the elections, and people should go out and vote," he said. Haitians must "not allow this election to end in contested results. We will not accept a candidate that is an understudy of Preval."

Nearly 4.7 million Haitians are eligible to vote in Sunday's elections, which will also see 11 of the country's 30 senators and all 99 parliamentary deputies chosen.

The next president faces the mammoth task of rebuilding a traumatized nation of 10 million that was already the poorest in the Americas even before a January earthquake flattened Port-au-Prince and claimed 250,000 lives.

Billions of dollars of international aid money could be squandered if no credible government emerges to replace Preval, who was himself under fire for his management of the cholera outbreak.

The build-up to the elections has been complicated by anti-UN riots in several regions, particularly in the north where aid agencies complain their cholera response is being badly hampered.

UN peacekeepers from Nepal are accused of bringing cholera into the country -- the epidemic erupted suspiciously near their base in the central Artibonite River valley and many Haitians are convinced they are to blame.

"As of today, there are no plans to move them out," Tony Banbury, UN assistant secretary general for field planning, told AFP when asked about the future of the Nepalese contingent of just over 1,000 troops and police.

"The country is suffering, there are people dying. It is natural that Haitians want to know what the source is," Banbury said in New York.

"But we don't know and I understand from the epidemiologists that it is hard to determine. Different, very professional experts are pointing in very different directions."

The Conference of Haitian Bishops urged the electorate on Sunday not to participate in violence and to "choose leaders who will work for all the people."

UN peacekeepers in armored trucks fired tear gas on the crowds in running clashes that lasted several hours in Port-au-Prince on Thursday. This followed days of rioting that left at least three people dead in northern Cap-Haitien.

Port-au-Prince had been seen as particularly at risk of widespread infection because of the crowded and unsanitary conditions endured by those living in the squalid, makeshift tent cities.

But less than 80 deaths have been recorded so far in the capital and the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has taken a lead role in treating the disease there, says the situation in the city is stabilizing.

"Cholera arrived two-and-a-half weeks ago in Port-au-Prince. At the start the number of cases was doubling each day. Since last week it has stabilized," Isabelle Janson told AFP at a hospital in the heart of the Cite-Soleil slum.

Four isolated cholera cases have been found in the neighboring Dominican Republic and two in the US state of Florida.

Senior UN officials have meanwhile expressed disappointment with the international response to its appeal for 164 million dollars to help Haiti combat the cholera epidemic.

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