SARAJEVO Nationalists from all three of Bosnia's ethnic groups were leading on Monday in the early official vote count from weekend general elections, striking a blow to Western hopes that more moderate parties would win.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is organizing the polls, issued results it said were based on one third of the ballots cast, cautioning these could change significantly once the rest of the ballots were counted.
They put the nationalist Serb Democratic Party (SDS) founded by indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic ahead in the Serb republic, one of the two highly autonomous entities created from the ruins left by Bosnia's 1992-5 war.
The nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) took the lead in the other entity, the Muslim-Croat Federation, where Croats are far outnumbered by Muslims, because the Muslim vote was split.
The Muslim nationalist Party for Democratic Action (SDA) came second in the federation, ahead of the multi-ethnic Social Democratic Party (SDP).
The trend applied to the parliamentary polls for each of the two entities as well as the joint state assembly.
SUBHEAD "Lost Opportunity" The West had urged Bosnia's Muslims, Serbs and Croats to turn their backs on the nationalist leaders who led them during the bloody 43-month conflict that followed the republic's declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in 1992.
It had hoped that a turn to more moderate parties would help resolve continuing deep ethnic divisions and reduce the country's dependence on international funding and some 20,000 NATO-led peacekeeping troops deployed in Bosnia.
A leading Bosnian newspaper said the elections were a "lost opportunity" that had taken the country only half a step away from its post-war crisis.
The Sarajevo-based Oslobodjenje daily said the polls had highlighted progress in freedom of movement and passed without serious incident, but had not marked an end to the politics of fear and division.
"In general, a diversion away from nationalism was expressed, but the national parties, by using negative campaigning' and manipulation, showed their stamina and ability to cling on by masking themselves," the daily said.
"The citizens have still not shown resistance to such traps." In Banja Luka, the de facto capital of the Serb Republic, SDS President Dragan Kalinic said earlier that as the votes tallied up, the party's victory had become "more and more convincing" and a rival party appeared to agree.
Kalinic's deputy, Mirko Sarovic, predicted he would become president of the republic and the party would be strong in both the republican and state parliaments.
"We think that there is absolutely no possibility for our victory to be jeopardized," Sarovic said.
Some Western officials have called for the party to be banned, charging that it retains links with Karadzic, who is on the run from two indictments by a United Nations war crimes tribunal.
Sarovic denied the links.
(Reuter)