Leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has vowed to continue fighting an outcome he says was rigged. The judges, whose decisions are final, have until 6 September to formally declare a president-elect.

Mr Calderon noted that the court had not yet confirmed his victory, but said its decision "satisfies me enormously". "I want to be very cautious... but we are going down a good road," he said.

The BBC's Duncan Kennedy in Mexico City says there is little now to stop Mr Calderon from becoming Mexico's next president and his victory will please Washington. Fears of a left-wing government on their doorstep, albeit in the benign form of Mr Lopez Obrador, can now be put to rest, he says.

Mr Calderon will be seen as a useful regional counterweight to the likes of Venezuela's fiery anti-American leader, Hugo Chavez, our correspondent adds.

'Parallel government'

Mr Lopez Obrador refused to accept the court's verdict, and vowed to continue fighting. "Never more will we accept that an illegal and illegitimate government is installed in our country," he told thousands of supporters in Mexico City.

Mr Lopez Obrador has led mass protests demanding a recount of all 41m ballots cast in July's election. The electoral court must formally declare the winner by 6 September.

Mr Lopez Obrador's campaign had filed complaints at around 50,000 polling stations, but the court ordered a recount at just 11,839 of them - about 9% of the national total. The seven judges decided there was no massive fraud and Mr Calderon had attracted a majority of votes.

The judges said there were only marginal changes to the original results because of recounts and annulments. They said that all parties lost a considerable amount of votes in the rechecking of ballots, but that did not affect the overall result. Our correspondent says that is likely to mean a continuation of the massive street protests that have blocked much of the capital during the past month.

The judges' decision is final and there are no appeals. The ruling clears the way for Mr Calderon to be declared president-elect - but Mexico's political crisis is not yet over, our correspondent reports. Our correspondent says that is likely to mean a continuation of the massive street protests that have blocked much of the capital during the past month.

Mr Lopez Obrador has spoken of forming a parallel government to fight what he calls this electoral injustice. Our correspondent says that is likely to mean a continuation of the massive street protests that have blocked much of the capital during the past month.

Nepal panel to question the king
By Sushil Sharma BBC News, Kathmandu
A panel in Nepal says that it will question King Gyanendra over his role in the crackdown against pro-democracy protesters earlier this year. It would be the first time a monarch in Nepal has faced such questioning.

Twenty-one protesters were killed and another 5,000 injured in three weeks of protests in April against the king's direct rule. The panel was set up by the seven-party alliance which took power after King Gyanendra gave up his absolute powers.

Money issues

One of the panel members, Harihar Birahi, told the BBC that the king's principal secretary, Pashupati Bhakta Maharjan, had been summoned to the panel on Thursday to discuss the procedure for questioning the monarch. The five-member panel, headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, Krishna Jung Rayamajhi, is due to end its work in two weeks' time.

It has questioned dozens of senior officials including ministers of the ousted royalist regime and top army and police officials over their roles in alleged excesses against the protesters. A panel member said many of those questioned had pointed fingers at King Gyanendra who headed the government as chairman of the council of ministers.

The former royalist government has also been accused of misusing millions of dollars in an abortive attempt to foil April's street protests. Nepalese kings have never been subject to questioning in the past as it was not allowed in law. But a recent landmark proclamation by parliament cut almost all the power and privileges of the monarch.

U.S. officials insist the aid is aboveboard and politically neutral, and say the Chavez government would harass or prosecute the grant recipients if they were identified. Chavez, however, believes the United States is campaigning _ overtly and covertly _ to undermine his leftist government, which has crusaded against U.S. influence in Latin America and elsewhere.

"The empire pays its lackeys, and it pays them well," he said recently, accusing some of his opponents of taking "gringo money." While USAID oversees much of the public U.S. spending on Latin America, President Bush's government also has stepped up covert efforts in the region. This month, Washington named a career CIA agent as the "mission manager" to oversee U.S. intelligence on Cuba and Venezuela.

The Bush administration has an $80 million plan to hasten change in Cuba, where Chavez has sworn to help defend Fidel Castro's communist system. The U.S. also is spending millions on pro-democracy work in Bolivia, where Bush has warned of "an erosion of democracy" since a Chavez ally, socialist Evo Morales, was elected president in December. Chavez makes no distinction between the programs supported by U.S. funds and the secret effort he claims the CIA is pursuing to destabilize his government. And it appears a crackdown on the U.S. aid is looming as Chavez runs for re-election in December.

Venezuelan prosecutors have brought conspiracy charges against the leaders of Sumate, a U.S.-backed group that frequently points out perceived flaws in the voting system. The pro-Chavez National Assembly is preparing to require nonprofit groups to reveal their funding sources. And Chavez has threatened to expel U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield, whom he accuses of stirring up trouble with USAID donations to youth baseball teams and day-care centers. Much of the spending is overseen by USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives, which also works in such "priority countries" as Iraq, Afghanistan, Bolivia and Haiti.

OTI says it has overseen more than $26 million for programs in Venezuela since 2002, when it began work here after a failed coup against Chavez. Much of it has gone toward more than 220 small grants as part of USAID's "Venezuela Confidence Building Initiative." "It's a pro-democracy program to work with Venezuelans of any point of view," said Adolfo Franco, USAID's assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean. "It's without political bias."

The USAID grants for 2004 and 2005 reviewed by AP include some charity projects _ like $19,543 for baseball equipment that Brownfield delivered to a pro-Chavez neighborhood and $23,189 for chickens and coops at a poor school. Others seem to promote good government, like $15,289 to publish a pocket guide on citizenship.

One recipient, the Development and Justice Consortium, held a workshop in a poor Caracas neighborhood on seeking accountability in local government. A neighborhood banner read "Chavez Forever," but teacher Antonio Quintin reminded students that "governments are only delegates." Most attendees had no idea U.S. money paid for the class, and even die-hard Chavez supporters saw nothing subversive in it. "As long as it brings benefits, it doesn't matter where the funding comes from," said Ingrid Sanchez, 40, a member of a local planning council.

But other projects remain so vague as to raise concern among Chavistas, such as a $47,459 grant for a "democratic leadership campaign," $37,614 for citizen meetings to discuss a "shared vision" for society, or $56,124 to analyze Venezuela's new constitution of 1999. All went to unidentified recipients. U.S. officials call the concerns baseless. They point to U.S.-funded programs meant to bridge the divide between Chavez's backers and opponents, such as conflict resolution workshops and public service announcements urging peaceful coexistence.

Much of the spending was for "in kind" aid _ anything from snacks to airfare, rather than cash. And every grant requires the inclusion of people from across the political spectrum. Even some pro-Chavez groups got support, said Russell Porter, an OTI official for Latin America.

Still, USAID said revealing more of their identities would be an "unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" that could endanger the recipients, saying some have been questioned for 12 hours at a time by the Venezuelan secret police. "It's simply for the security of the recipient," Porter said. "The only thing we've held back are the names of the groups."

U.S. officials say they simply want to promote dialogue and strengthen Venezuela's "fragile democratic institutions." But at the same time, Bush has repeatedly called Chavez a threat to democracy, and Chavez sympathizers find it hard to trust the U.S. government's motives.

"It's trying to implement regime change. There's no doubt about it. I think the U.S. government tries to mask it by saying it's a noble mission," said Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American lawyer who wrote "The Chavez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela," a book that cites public documents to argue that Washington is systematically trying to overthrow Chavez. Golinger sees parallels in past U.S. campaigns, partly covert, to aid government opponents in countries from Nicaragua to Ukraine. "It's too suspicious to have such a high level of secrecy," she said.

The U.S. State Department also has supported electoral observer missions and training for human rights activists as part of the $26 million spent since 2002. In addition, the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy has awarded $2.9 million in pro-democracy grants for Venezuela since 2002, and the U.S.-funded International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute have provided technical training to help restructure various Venezuelan political parties and supported training of electoral observers.

"It isn't designed to favor one party or another," said the National Democratic Institute's president, Ken Wollack. "All parties have participated." But friction is mounting as Chavez seeks re-election. He holds a wide lead in the polls, and predicts the U.S. will try to discredit the December vote if he wins, with ammunition provided by U.S.-funded nonprofit groups.

Chavistas say their president has good reason to be concerned, given how quickly U.S. officials recognized his opponents during a short-lived coup in 2002. Immediately after Chavez was driven from power, the International Republican Institute's then president, George Folsom, issued a statement praising those who "rose up to defend democracy." Chavez regained the presidency amid huge street protests, and the IRI's leadership later renounced Folsom's statement as contrary to the group's pro-democracy mission.

Still, all these efforts to influence another country's political process raise concerns outside Venezuela, too. "It's very hard to accept an innocent directing of those funds," said Bill Monning, a law professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. "We would scream bloody murder if any outside force were interfering in our internal political system."

Sumate leader Maria Corina Machado, who met Bush at the White House last year, faces up to 16 years in prison if convicted of conspiracy for using $31,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy that she says went for voter education courses. Three other Sumate members also face charges. Meanwhile, Venezuelan lawmakers recommended that Sumate be investigated for currency and tax law violations, and they've given initial approval, in a first reading, to a new law that would require non-governmental organizations to reveal their funding sources.

CIVICUS, a South Africa-based international group that supports citizen participation, says the proposed law will "endanger the existence of an independent civil society." Russia adopted a similar law targeting human rights and pro-democracy groups this year after opposition leaders rose to power in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Critics say Venezuela's law would bring heavy-handed tactics, but Chavez supporters say they need to keep tabs on U.S. spending.

"They're promoting a U.S. agenda," Golinger said, "and that's the overall goal: to eventually get Chavez out of power."

On the Net:
Results of AP's FOIA request: http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/usaidvenezuela.xls