Bissau, Guinea-Bissau  - Guinea Bissau's former ruling party the PAIGC has won a parliamentary majority in elections seen as crucial for bringing stability to the tiny West African nation, an election monitoring official said Friday.

Javier Gutierrez, spokesperson for the European Union election monitoring mission that observed last Sunday's polls, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that provisional results showed the PAIGC scooped 67 seats out of an possible 100.

The previous coalition government fell apart in August when the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), which had 45 seats in parliament, abandoned a national stability pact.

The PAIGC saw off the newly formed Republican Party for Independence and Development (PRID), which was allied to President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira.

Vieira returned to power in 2005, six years after he was ousted in the civil war. Vieira is a hero of the independence struggle against Portugal and ruled the country for 19 years prior to the civil war.

But Vieira has faced problems since he regained power and, just after parliament dissolved in August, he had his navy chief arrested on suspicion of planning a coup.

The international community - including the European Union, the United Nations and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) - funded the polls. Over
150 foreign election observers were on the ground to monitor the polls.

Donors are hoping that a stable government will emerge from the election and help curb the rise of South American drug barons.

The nation has struggled with coups and uprisings since its independence from Portugal in 1974, and is still recovering from the 1998-99 civil war that took out much of its infrastructure.

Now narcotics experts are warning that the country has turned into a "narco-state" as drug smugglers take advantage of weak governance and policing to use the as a hub for transporting drugs into Europe.

Guinea-Bissau is one of the poorest countries in the world, and is ranked at 175 out of 177 nations in the UN Development Programme's Human Development Index.

A new report, "The African Report on Child Wellbeing: How child-friendly are African governments" released Thursday in Nairobi, said Guinea-Bissau was the worst country for children to grow up in Africa.

Most of its 1.6 million inhabitants survive from subsistence farming. Life expectancy at birth is only 46 years. (dpa)