Serbs Try To Elect President Apathy, Democratic Boycott Sabotaged 2 Earlier Elections

Serbians tried for a third time Sunday to choose a new president, but unofficial early returns pointed toward a runoff between an ally of longtime power-broker Slobodan Milosevic and a militant ultranationalist.

Overriding fears that voter apathy would invalidate the vote, state and independent sources said turnout exceeded the required 50 percent. A boycott called by the democratic opposition to Milosevic apparently failed.

And confounding opinion polls that had predicted a first-place finish for former paramilitary leader Vojislav Seselj, initial figures given by Seselj’s own Radical Party showed him trailing the candidate of Milosevic’s ruling Socialists, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Milan Milutinovic.

Seselj, a former Milosevic ally whose troops fought wars in Bosnia and Croatia, is widely condemned by the West.

Based on returns from 17 percent of polling stations, the Radicals said Milutinovic had 42.5 percent of votes cast, against 33.5 percent for Seselj.

The Socialists also said Milutinovic - one of Milosevic’s closest allies - had a convincing lead over Seselj.

But neither appeared to have the 50 percent of votes cast needed for outright victory. If that trend holds, the two men will face a runoff Dec. 21.

The state election commission expected final results today. Milosevic, who has dominated Serbia for a decade and led it in and out of war, moved to the Yugoslav presidency last summer because he was constitutionally barred from a third term as the president of Serbia.

So far, he has proven unable to heave an ally into the Serbian presidential post.

In September, a Milosevic ally was the top vote-getter in the first presidential vote, followed by Seselj. In an October runoff, Seselj won. But authorities said only 48.9 percent of voters cast ballots.

The democratic opposition again asked Serbians to boycott the vote. Zoran Djindjic, a boycott leader, said there was no difference among the candidates and none would bring the genuine changes and democracy Serbia needs.

The 42-year-old Seselj is the choice of Serbs disappointed with Milosevic’s retreat from nationalism, or angry that his decade in power has enriched his associates but left most Serbs poorer.

Many Serbs back Seselj’s call to root out rampant corruption and crime, which flourished during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

However, Seselj is a threat to the one-third of Serbia’s people who are not ethnic Serbs.

The most numerous are 2 million ethnic Albanians in Serbia’s ethnically tense Kosovo province, where violence has been on the rise.

Kosovo’s Albanians boycotted the vote Sunday, as they have with every Serbian election in the past decade.

Both Milutinovic and Seselj apparently gained at the expense of the third-placed Vuk Draskovic, a former communist and nationalist who now espouses a more moderate, proWestern line.