Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni Thursday took up legal challenge from his major rival, former candidate Kiiza Besigye of the opposition party in the presidential race held last month.

The lawyers of Besigye, leader of Forum of Democratic Change ( FDC), delivered the petition to the State House shortly around noon, a government statement said.

"President Museveni signed acknowledging the service of the petition which was witnessed by......" several high ranking officials, it said.

Museveni succeeded in winning himself a third term in office in the five candidate run on February 23, with a wide margin of 59 percent of the votes cast by 7.1 million voters, while his close rival Besigye garnered 37 percent of the votes.

The petition put the Election Committee in the place of first respondent, enlisting Museveni who lead National Resistance Movement (NRM) as the second, the statement added.

Besigye formally brought up the legal fight with Museveni two days after he was acquitted of rape charges by High Court, meanwhile a martial court also dropped charges against him of terrorism and illegal possession of firearms. The other three candidates did not join forces with Besigye as they had conceded failure to Museveni early this month.

Most of 400 foreign monitors and thousands of local observers believed the elections were not flawless, but generally fair and free.

Museveni held a private meeting with a team of his defense lawyers after took up the legal fight, but the statement did not reveal his next move. The similar wrangling between Museveni and Besigye on elections results ended up in a court in 2001, which was ultimately thrown out by the judge.

Source: Xinhua