Battered by government scandals, Costa Rica slid further into uncertainty on Monday when a presidential election that could decide the future of a trade deal with Washington was gridlocked, Reuters reported. Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias, a former president, was tied with Otton Solis, and an electoral official said it could take more than a week before a winner was declared. With votes from 85 percent of polling centers counted in Sunday's poll, social democrat Arias was at 40.6 percent. Solis, who once worked for Arias as planning minister, had 40.2 percent. Arias, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for efforts to end civil wars in Central America, was bullish. "If I win one more vote than him, I am president," he told journalists. The country's best-known son, Arias, 65, appealed to Costa Ricans angry at a series of corruption scandals. But it was an unexpectedly strong performance by Solis, 51, a technocrat and former central bank official who said it was too early for claims of victory. --More 21 41 Local Time 18 41 GMT
