Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday congratulated U.S. President Barack Obama on his re-election and called on him to pursue Middle East peace efforts.

Abbas "congratulated U.S. President Barak Obama on his re-election as U.S. president for a second term," said a statement carried by official news agency WAFA.

EU leaders on Wednesday congratulated Barack Obama for his reelection to the White House, saying they look forward to boosting ties with the United States and cooperating on global challenges.

European Union President Herman Van Rompuy, who was first to react, wrote on his Twitter account: "Very happy about the reelection of President Obama."

U.S. President Barack Obama said late Tuesday the American people have "picked ourselves up" and fought back during tough economic times, declaring after winning re-election that the "best is yet to come."

"In this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back," Obama said at a triumphant victory party in Chicago.

Iran has decided to attend a conference in Finland next month on creating a zone in the Middle East free of nuclear weapons, Tehran's ambassador to the U.N. atomic agency said Tuesday.

"I announced officially today (Tuesday) in a Brussels ... that the Islamic Republic of Iran has decided to participate in the conference in Helsinki in December," Ali Asghar Soltanieh told Agence France Presse by phone from Brussels.

Incumbent Barack Obama is laying low in hometown Chicago on election day Tuesday, but the three other protagonists in the presidential election have all converged on the same city: Cleveland, Ohio.

It is a measure of the intensity of the battle for the crucial Midwestern state that the campaign planes of Republican nominee Mitt Romney, his running mate Paul Ryan, and Obama's Vice President Joe Biden all wound up within a few hundreds yards (meters) of one another on the tarmac here.

President Barack Obama said he expects to have "a good night" by the end of election day Tuesday, and congratulated his Republican rival Mitt Romney for waging a "spirited campaign."

Obama spent the day in his hometown Chicago meeting with volunteers and calling some of them up personally to thank them for their work, before he hosts a results watch party in the city.

From a New England hamlet to a critical swing state neighboring Washington's halls of power to the storm-scarred streets of New York, Americans lined up Tuesday to cast ballots for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.

Many were patient, some were jittery and still others -- those still enduring power outages and the mountainous mess and wreckage left by superstorm Sandy last week -- were perhaps understandably a bit cranky.

Americans voted Tuesday in a nail-biting presidential election marked by the starkly different economic visions of Democratic incumbent Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

The time for obsessing over key state opinion polls was over as the greatest political show entered its thrilling finale after an 18-month roller-coaster ride that exposed the nation's bitter polarization.

With the specter of the 2000 presidential election as a backdrop, the campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have legions of lawyers ready to swamp polling stations Tuesday to make sure every vote counts for their respective candidate.

The main fear is a repeat of the election 12 years ago, when Republican George W. Bush lost the popular vote but won more electoral college votes than Democrat Al Gore after an acrimonious vote recount in Florida. The matter was resolved more than a month after the election by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Red Cross relief agency said Saturday it was stepping up efforts to help those struck by Hurricane Sandy, amid fears a new storm could hit the U.S. East Coast next week.

As millions in New York, New Jersey and the region picked up the pieces in Sandy's devastating wake, forecasters are warning another bout of bad weather could bring biting wind, rain and possibly even snow to the region.