Macedonia president vote peaceful, goes to runoff

Macedonia's presidential election was headed to a runoff Sunday after a peaceful first round vote seen as key to the country's European Union aspirations following deadly violence in 2008 polls.

The candidate of the ruling conservative party, George Ivanov, led the pack with nearly 39 percent of the vote but fell short of an outright victory, forcing a runoff on April 5, election officials said.

"There will be a second round," electoral commission chief Aleksandar Novakovski told reporters with around 16 percent of the ballots tallied.

The race for second place was too close to call, with Ljubomir Frckoski of the main opposition Social Democrats, independent candidate Ljube Boskoski and ethnic Albanian leader Imer Selmani fighting for the spot.

"The elections were conducted in a good atmosphere, without incidents and with no major irregularities," Novakovski said earlier after polling stations closed.

The EU had called the elections a "moment of truth" for the ex-Yugoslav republic, and authorities were pressed to ensure there was no repeat of the unrest that marred last year's parliamentary polls.

Macedonia is yet to start EU accession talks four years after becoming an official candidate to join the bloc, while its hopes of entering the NATO military alliance have been blocked by Greece over an 18-year name dispute.

The Balkan country came close to a full-blown war during a 2001 conflict between security forces and ethnic Albanian rebels that ended with a peace accord giving the minority more rights and control over local affairs.

When casting his ballot, outgoing President Branko Crvenkovski said "peaceful and democratic" polls were needed "to fulfill the most serious precondition for our Euro-Atlantic integration."

Police deployed 8,500 officers to prevent any recurrence of the June 1, 2008 election day shootings that left one person dead and several others wounded in an ethnic Albanian area.

Heavy snow in the western mountainous regions had disrupted voting, but that had little impact on the turnout, which easily surpassed a 50 percent threshold for the polls to be valid.

The EU's representative in Macedonia, Erwan Fouere, congratulated authorities on the peaceful conduct of the vote.

"Of course we'll have to wait for the final... report, but from what I have seen at the polling stations I have visited... the elections seem to have taken place in a reasonably calm atmosphere," Fouere told AFP.

"For this I would like to congratulate the electoral board and especially the voters who despite the bad weather came out to vote."

Opinion polls had favoured Ivanov to come first and Selmani second in Sunday's first round, when almost 1.8 million voters were asked to choose from seven candidates.

While voting in Skopje, Ivanov appealed to voters of the majority Slavic Macedonian nation to "behave responsibly to contribute to... the European perspective for Macedonia."

Selmani, who represents a minority of about 25 percent of the two million population, said: "I expect inter-ethnic barriers to be overcome" so that candidates are chosen on the basis of "vision and concepts" rather than ethnicity.

Besides the presidential poll, voters were also asked to elect mayors and councillors of major towns in Macedonia, which won independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.







Malaysia" festival in Kuala Lumpur. REUTERS/Zainal Abd Halim