EU, OSCE give thumbs down to Milosevic

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said all available information pointed to a clear lead for opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica.

"Claims of victory by pro-Milosevic forces are not credible," OSCE chairman and Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement issued in Vienna.

The OSCE, Europe’s leading electoral monitoring body, was barred from vetting the election.

In an earlier, even more forthright comment, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said there was evidence of a massive defeat for Milosevic.

The pro-Western government of Serbia’s small sister republic of Montenegro predicted that Kostunica had won outright. Deputy Prime Minister Dragisa Burzan told Reuters he thought Milosevic would be forced from power within a month.

With rival parties issuing preliminary results, Kostunica said he believed he had won and predicted a "new dawn".

While Yugoslavs waited for a final tally later in the week from elections that the West hopes have broken Milosevic’s 13-year lock on power, Kostunica declared:

"This is our joint historic moment, a new great dawning for Serbia and Yugoslavia, a dawn of our freedom."

Earlier, thousands of his supporters danced and cheered in the capital Belgrade and other cities.

"Look how happy people are when they see even such a small sign of victory!" said one of them, 25-year-old Pedja.

The largest opposition group, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, said that with results in from 51 per cent of polling stations, Kostunica had 53 per cent to Milosevic’s 36 per cent.

A candidate needs more than 50 per cent of the vote to win outright without having to contest a second round. Turnout appeared to have been high, at above 70 per cent, which analysts said would benefit the opposition.

Milosevic’s Socialist Party coalition partner, the Yugoslav Left (JUL) of Milosevic’s wife Mirjana Markovic, said data from 1,984 polling stations showed Milosevic leading with 56.3 per cent of the vote against 31.4 per cent for Kostunica.

But Britain’s Cook, speaking to reporters in Brighton, England, said results showed Kostunica leading by 57 per cent to 33 per cent, adding that Milosevic had even lost in his hometown:

"Today Milosevic is a beaten, broken-backed president. My message to him today is: Be honest with your people. Get out of the way and let Serbia get out of the prison you have turned it into."

Milosevic, indicted for war crimes by a United Nations tribunal, has been accused by the West of planning to rig the election in any way necessary to ensure he remains in power.

Changes in election rules, lack of independent foreign monitoring and reports of intimidation of voters were all seen as stacking the vote in his favour.

Washington-based analyst Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said: "If I had to guess, I would guess that Milosevic will outlast this election and will be in office for the near future but that the election, even though he called it, will prove to be the beginning of the end of this regime."

The United States said the elections — for president and parliament — had been badly flawed and warned Milosevic that his response was being watched.

Fears that violence would be stoked to provide an excuse fora clampdown proved unjustified, with rival opposition and government rallies passing off peacefully in major cities.

There was some joy for Milosevic in Montenegro, where he won an easy victory.

However, Montenegro accounts for less than six percent of registered Yugoslav voters and a boycott by the pro-Western government of the republic meant those who turned out were largely Milosevic supporters.

In the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, UN administrators sent out teams to ensure ballot boxes could not be "stuffed" with votes of Kosovo Albanians, estimated to total up to 1.8 million. About 60,000 Kosovo Serbs, all that remains of a population of some 200,000 before last year’s NATO air strikes, were eligible to vote.