By John Zodzi

LOME, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Togo, which held multi-party elections last month, has fulfilled conditions for the European Union to restore full cooperation with the small West African state, the EU's top aid official said.

Louis Michel, the EU's development and aid commissioner, made the announcement late on Saturday in Lome after meeting Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe, whose ruling RPT party won a big majority in the Oct. 14 parliamentary polls.

The European Union, once Togo's biggest donor, froze most aid in 1993, citing the poor democratic record of the former French colony which has suffered decades of authoritarian rule and periods of bloody unrest since independence in 1960.

Holding multi-party elections met one of the conditions set by the EU for normalising cooperation, and international observers declared them broadly free, fair and transparent.

"From my point of view, the conditions for the full and complete normalisation of cooperation between the European Union and Togo are fulfilled," Michel told reporters after his talks with Gnassingbe.

Full cooperation should be formally restored in the coming weeks, he said.

Despite the endorsement of the elections by the international observers, the opposition Union of Forces for Change (UFC) party, which won 27 out of 81 national assembly seats in the vote, has challenged the result.

The UFC, which had boycotted previous polls on the grounds they were unfair, has called for Togo's constitutional court to investigate the vote count, which gave 50 seats to the ruling Rally of the Togolese People (RPT).

Togo's national election commission said that more than half the ballot boxes in the capital had not been officially sealed and that results had been recorded from polling booths which were not on official lists.

The constitutional court has made no direct comment on these allegations but has said its announcement of the results last month was final and irrevocable.

Despite their party's misgivings over the poll result, the elected UFC deputies attended parliament last week for the first time in more than a decade. (Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Tim Pearce)

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