Mr Sassou-Nguesso has set up a government, mostly drawn from the north where he comes from.
Three years ago, Angolan troops went to Congo-Brazzaville to restore Denis Sassou-Nguesso to power (see article).
Mr Sassou-Nguesso wants the ballot to make his nasty regime look more respectable.
Fighting between supporters of Congo-Brazzaville 's President Pascal Lissouba and his predecessor, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, broke out again in the capital.
Mr Sassou-Nguesso is still supported by the Angolan government, which backed him in 1997 and now has troops stationed in the country.
Still unrecognised as president by many countries, Mr Sassou-Nguesso was given a lengthy audience with Mr Chirac at last week's Francophone summit in Hanoi.
Cynics note that the only building in central Brazzaville which was not wrecked and then looted by Mr Sassou-Nguesso's fighters is the French embassy.
Instead, it gave the job for a year to the president of Congo-Brazzaville, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, who first took power in a coup in 1979.
The Ninjas' political wing hopes eventually to take part in elections, but President Sassou-Nguesso has a habit of banning his opponents from standing for office.
Mr Sassou-Nguesso won a presidential election on March 10th with 89% of the vote, after his main opponents either stood down or were barred from entering the country.
Mr Sassou-Nguesso, a friend of President Chirac since 1983, and a member of a leading French freemasonry lodge, maintained his close contact with French officials throughout the fighting.
That left a lot of Sassou-Nguesso supporters extremely disgruntled.
On February 12, 2006, the London Sunday Times reported that Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the President of Congo-Brazzaville, another former French colony in central Africa, had spent more than three hundred thousand dollars on hotel rooms during a visit to New York for a U.N.
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