(Adds government, opposition, observer comment)

By Nick Tattersall and Tiemoko Diallo

BAMAKO, April 30 (Reuters) - Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure looks set to win a second term as head of the impoverished West African state, results trickling in from around the vast country showed on Monday.

Toure, popularly known by his initials "ATT", appeared to have secured the majority needed to win Sunday's election in the first round, based on initial returns from the capital Bamako and some rural communes.

"There won't be a second round," said government spokesman Ousmane Thiam, minister for investment promotion for small and medium firms.

In Bamako, where the opposition had been expected to make its strongest showing, Toure took 54 percent of the vote, comfortably ahead of his closest rival, national assembly president and former prime minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who polled 39 percent.

His lead was even wider in the towns and villages of rural Mali, home to most of the country's voters and the focus of Toure's development efforts during his first five-year term.

Results from 52 of the 697 communes outside Bamako showed him taking 71 percent to Keita's 18 percent. Turnout, historically low in Malian polls, was 24 percent in Bamako but 38 percent outside the capital.

Foreign observers said the polls had been free and fair, but the opposition said it would contest the outcome.

"We refuse all these results because the vote has been stained by many examples of fraud," Keita's campaign director, Macki Diallo, told Reuters.

Keita had already cried foul before the results were announced, saying electoral lists were out of date, ballot papers had been circulated before voting began and that the military had been told to back Toure.

CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH

West Africa's second-biggest state, much of which lies in the Sahara, is one of the world's poorest countries. Four-fifths of its workforce are employed in farming, cultivating cotton, rice and grains.

Mechanising agriculture and building roads to get produce to market have been among Toure's priorities.

The country now boasts more tractors than any other in West Africa bar Nigeria and Toure, a softly-spoken former parachute commando, has pledged investment to more than triple cereal production if voted in again.

Election observers and diplomats said aside from a few technical glitches, they had seen no evidence of irregularities which could undermine the credibility of Sunday's polls.

"Despite some shortcomings, the presidential election of April 29 has been free, fair and credible," said former Togolese Prime Minister Koffi Sama, head of an observation team from regional bloc ECOWAS.

Credited with rescuing West Africa's second-largest country from military dictatorship, Toure first seized power in a 1991 coup and won international acclaim for handing over to an elected president the following year.

Dubbed "The Soldier of Malian Democracy" he then retired from the army and was elected head of state in 2002, maintaining a favourable reputation among donors and investors ever since.

Analysts hope Mali's poll will be a boost to Africa's democratic credentials, particularly after the violence and chaos that marred elections in its most populous nation, Nigeria, a week earlier.

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