(24 Sep 2000) Serbo-Croat/Nat
XFA
Voters in Yugoslavia began selecting a new president and parliament on Sunday in a historic ballot which polls indicate President Slobodan Milosevic may lose.
Polls opened on schedule at 0700 local time (0500 GMT) and close at 2000 local time (1800 GMT).
Many of the first voters at the polls pledged firm support for the incumbent Yugoslav president.
Some seven point eight (M) million eligible voters, including an estimated 100-thousand Kosovo Serbs, were also to decide on the new composition of the country's 178-seat federal assembly and new municipal governments.
Milosevic was trailing Vojislav Kostunica by an average of 10 percentage points in the latest public opinion polls ahead of the vote.
Three other candidates are seeking the presidency, and if no one wins an absolute majority, a runoff will be held in two weeks.
The election process has been marred by repression against opposition supporters, one-sided coverage by the staunchly pro-Milosevic media and the lack of broad-based independent monitoring of the vote.
Yugoslavia refused to let European Union officials monitor the balloting and severely limited the number of foreign journalists permitted in the country.
Only a limited number of opposition officials will be present at the more than 10-thousand polling stations and in state-appointed committees set up to process the ballots.
The first official results were not expected before Monday, but the opposition has announced a parallel counting of ballots based on its own representatives in polling stations.
Its supporters were urged to follow the results on video screens in major cities on Sunday evening.
Milosevic's power base is Serbia.
The smaller Yugoslav republic, Montenegro, is led by a separate, pro-Western leadership that has said it might declare independence if Milosevic stays in power.
It declared Sunday's ballot illegal.
However, a faction of Montenegrins who support Milosevic has organised elections on their own.
The vote could decide whether Serbia and Montenegro stay together or the rump federation falls apart.
If he loses the elections, Milosevic also risks extradition to the U-N war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands, which has indicted him for atrocities committed by his troops in the Kosovo war.
SOUNDBITE: (Serbo-Croat)
\"I will vote for Milosevic.\"
SUPER CAPTION: Vox pop
SOUNDBITE: (Serbo-Croat)
\"I hope our lives will be better after the elections.\"
SUPER CAPTION: Vox pop
SOUNDBITE: (Serbo-Croat)
\"Of course I will vote for Milosevic, who else?\"
SUPER CAPTION: Vox pop
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