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BELGRADE (AFP) - Opposition presidential hopeful Vojislav Kostunica rejected late Tuesday the possibility of a run-off against President Slobodan Milosevic, called earlier by the federal electoral commission.
"This is an offer which can and must be rejected, since it is insulting for all citizens of this country who came out to the polls," Kostunica said in a written statement faxed to AFP. The statement by the commission was a "political fraud and obvious stealing of votes," Kostunica said. After nearly two days of silence, the country's federal election commission announced the first official results from Sunday's election, declaring that Kostunica won 48.2% to Milosevic's 40.2%. A candidate requires more than 50% to be declared the outright winner and avoid a run-off. Milosevic's Socialists "are trying to bargain for the run-off for Milosevic," said Kostunica, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), an 18-party coalition. The results, the first official count of the ballots by the commission since Sunday, were based on a preliminary tally from 10,153 of all 10,500 polling stations. The DOS immediately slammed the commission's decision as a "huge fraud". The Yugoslav leader's regime was "trying to buy time in a bid to cause confusion among the citizens and provoke rifts among the [DOS] parties," Kostunica said. "The people have passed political judgment on Milosevic's policies ... our duty is to convey this sentence," Kostunica said. "We will neither lose patience nor make any hasty move, which could increase tensions in society or provoke unforeseeable consequences," he added. Kostunica won 2,428,714 votes and Milosevic won 2,026,478 votes, the commission said, adding: "With regard to this data, it can be concluded that the second round of the presidential vote will be held." A DOS representative on the electoral commission, Sinisia Nikolic, suggested to Beta news agency that a run-off would be opposed, saying the preliminary results had yet to be unanimously approved by the commission's 18 members, including the opposition officials. The DOS had insisted earlier that Kostunica won the first-round poll with 54.66% of the vote, against just 35% for Milosevic, based on a count of 97.5% of the ballots. Zoran Djindjic of the DOS said that the umbrella group "has no intention of bargaining with the people's will." Asked whether the DOS would accept the run-off, Djindjic was firm. "We are going to respect the results we have," Djindjic said, adding that the DOS representatives would contact the commission to compare results. Marko Blagojevic, of the non-governmental monitoring group the Center for Free and Democratic Elections (CESID), whose estimates from the polls were in line with the DOS ones, also condemned the commission's statement. "Either their computers crashed or this is conscious manipulation," Marko Blagojevic of CESID said. Earlier, Patriarch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox Church on Tuesday urged Milosevic, the police and the army, to accept the electoral "will" of the people. The Patriarch "hopes that the ruling parties will respect the will of the people, thus contributing to the well-being of the people and the state," the church's statement said. The church leader also urged the army and police to "defend the interests of the people and the state and not of a single man," the statement said. |
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