Pro-West Candidate Said To Win Belgrade Poll

4 October 2004 -- An official tally has not yet been announced, but preliminary results by independent monitors say a pro-Western candidate has defeated an ultranationalist for the powerful post of Belgrade mayor in a runoff poll for local governments across Serbia.

Aleksandar Vucic of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) conceded defeat late yesterday shortly after the Center for Free Elections and Democracy said he won 48 percent of the vote compared to 50 percent for Democratic Party (DS) candidate Nenad Bogdanovic.

In the second-largest city of Novi Sad, the municipal electoral commission announced on its website that Serbian Radical Party candidate Maja Gojkovic defeated Democratic Party candidate Borislav Novakovic by a mere 695 votes. Novakovic has also conceded defeat.

These were the first democratic local elections in Serbia since the ouster of nationalist leader Slobodan Milosevic and his regime in October 2000.

(Reuters/AP/dpa)