The people of Guinea-Bissau began voting for a new president yesterday in polls meant to end two years of transitional government in a country notorious for coups and uprisings since independence from Portugal in 1974.

Dozens of people queued outside polling stations, some of them simple tables under mango and baobab trees, while others made their way to vote through streets decorated with the brightly coloured posters of rival candidates.

?These elections are very important. We hope we will choose a president who will bring calm, peace and prosperity?, said Djibril Papa Camara, 21, a medic waiting to vote in the Bairro Militar district of the capital Bissau.

The run-up to the polls has been marred by fears of turmoil after ousted ruler Kumba Yala, one of the main candidates, declared himself the rightful head of state last month and said he had only left power in 2003 under duress.

Tensions in the capital rose late last month when interim President Henrique Rosa accused Yala ? who was ousted in a bloodless putsch two years ago ? of staging a coup by briefly occupying the presidency building.

Most analysts predict a three-way race between Yala and two other former rulers ? Joao Bernardo Vieira and Malam Bacai Sanha ? for the top job in a nation whose population of around 1.4 million people scrape by on an average $140 a year.

?I hope the president we chose will allow our children to go to school and for us others who work very hard to find a better way of life?, said Thiambou Dabo, 36, cooking couscous outside one polling station for voters who had not yet had breakfast.

The U.N. Security Council has said Yala?s bid for election could jeopardise the process. Many army generals in the flat, densely-forested country are from the same tribe as Yala and some are said to back the former philosophy professor.

Yala?s PRS party has called for the polls to be delayed, saying that voters? lists were published too late and that the electoral census was riddled with irregularities, a call echoed by President Abdoulaye Wade of neighbouring Senegal.

Vieira, who returned to Bissau in April in a military helicopter after six years in exile, seized power in a coup in 1980, won multi-party elections in 1994 but was ousted in a putsch in 1999 after a civil war.

Sanha is running for the PAICG party which fought the Portuguese and dominated political life for more than two decades. Some 250 foreign observers will monitor the polls, in which 13 candidates are standing.