The new president of the Comoros islands denied on Tuesday he was an extremist who would promote Shariah law and antagonise the West. Ahmed Abdullah Mohamed Sambi, who won Sunday's election, said his priority was fighting poverty on the Indian Ocean archipelago.
"Those who accuse me are just political aggressors. Comorans are not extremist," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.
The accusations of extremism were made by opponents during the election campaign.
Sambi - nicknamed the "Ayatollah" because of his devout Muslim faith and religious studies in Iran - was elected on a message of change after decades of corruption and civil strife.
"I am not an extremist. I am against extremism and I am against terrorism," said Sambi, who visited a Catholic church last week to demonstrate his tolerant views.
Ninety-eight percent of the islands' 670,000 people are - like Sambi - Sunni Muslims, the remainder Catholics.
Most Comorans lament their association with locally born Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, an al Qaeda bomber blamed for the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
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