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Bosnian Serb, Croat Nationalists Claim Win; Social Democrats Cautious
by Lajla Veselica
SARAJEVO (AFP) - Bosnian Serb and Croat nationalists claimed victory Sunday within their communities while a multi-ethnic force, tipped to diminish the influence of Muslim nationalists, voiced cautious optimism as ballots of Saturday's elections were being slowly counted.
In Bosnia's third general elections since the 1992-95 war, voters were electing representatives to the central parliament and MPs for the parliaments of the country's two postwar entities - the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbs' Republika Srpska (RS). The voters also elected a president for the RS.
Elections for ten cantonal assemblies in the Muslim-Croat Federation were also held.
After a count of over one third of the votes, the Bosnian Serb nationalist Serb Democratic Party (SDS) showed no doubts about a triple electoral triumph in the general vote.
Their presidential candidate, Mirko Sarovic, had a crushing lead over his opponents, with 59.4% of the votes ahead of moderate Milorad Dodik, credited with 29.7%.
SDS presidential figures were based on 455,185 votes counted of a total of 840,00 people registered to vote in the RS.
The SDS also led among the Serb parties in the elections for Bosnia's central parliament with 41% to 65% of the votes, depending on constituencies, based on a count of a bit more than one third of votes.
In the vote for the RS assembly, the SDS led in six constituencies with an absolute majority in four of them according to the same figures.
The nationalist Croat Democratic Union (HDZ) claimed victory in five cantons with a Croat majority, with party estimates showing that the HDZ was supported by more than 70%.
The HDZ expected results for both the central and the Muslim-Croat Federation parliaments would be even better than those on the cantonal level, an HDZ spokesperson said.
"It is a plebiscitary support for the HDZ since almost two-thirds of Croat voters in Bosnia supported us," spokesperson Zoran Tomic said.
However, the party might face serious sanctions by the international community for organizing a referendum on Croats' rights in Bosnia on the polling day.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), organizing and overseeing Bosnia's postwar elections, said Sunday that the referendum was not only a violation of electoral rules but that it might be a serious violation of the Dayton peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war.
Meanwhile, the multi-ethnic Social Democrats, tipped to diminish the influence of Muslim nationalists and emerge as a leading force in both the country's central parliament and the Muslim-Croat Federation assembly, were cautiously claiming a lead.
"On the basis of a relatively small sample, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has a clear advantage over other parties," Svetozar Pudaric, an SDP official, told a press conference early Sunday.
Pudaric, however, stressed that the estimates were based on eight to 30% of the votes counted in different municipalities.
Still, SDP leader Zlatko Lagumdzija said that the sample was an indication that the SDP was "number one" in both the Muslim-Croat Federation and the whole of Bosnia. However, the party had not released any new estimates by Sunday late afternoon.
But the Muslim nationalist Party of Democratic Action (SDA) claimed it had an advantage over the SDP, according to estimates based on 70% of the votes counted in the federation.
The SDA had some 7,000 to 8,000 votes more than the SDP, Sulejman Tihic, SDA vice-president told journalists.
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