In Tallahassee, the Florida Supreme Court rejected an appeal today by Vice President Al Gore and refused to begin the immediate manual recount of 14,000 disputed votes from South Florida.

Su Chi, the Nationalists' senior spokesman, said the party still wanted an immediate recount as well as an investigation into Mr. Chen's wounds.

Although Mr. Su called for an immediate recount, a senior government official said it would be hard to conduct a recount without using schools on a weekend.

And five of the seven current Florida Supreme Court justices participated in the 4-to-3 December 2000 ruling that ordered an immediate manual recount of ballots across the state.

Lien Chan, the Nationalist candidate who lost the election to President Chen by less than a quarter of a percentage point of the vote, said in an interview on Sunday evening that he wanted an immediate recount.

When asked by a reporter what his first act would be if elected, he quipped, "I will demand an immediate recount."

After the rally, President Chen said he would accept an immediate, court-supervised recount.

- drew, for the moment, a stunning and clear answer with the 4-to-3 decision of the Florida Supreme Court to order an immediate manual recount of thousands of ballots across the state.

Vice President Al Gore's flagging presidential hopes were suddenly jolted back to life this afternoon when a bitterly divided Florida Supreme Court ordered an immediate manual recount of thousands of ballots across the state.

He has never been known for subtlety, but his statement did include the sentence, "If I won, I would ask for an immediate recount."