Silajdzic wins race for Bosnian Presidency

SARAJEVO—Bosnia's wartime foreign minister Haris Silajdzic won the race for the Muslim member of the three-man presidency against incumbent Sulejman Tihic, preliminary results and party projections showed on Monday.
Silajdzic is the strongest advocate of the abolition of Bosnia's two autonomous regions -- the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic -- which Bosnian Serbs hotly oppose.
With 40 percent of the votes counted Silajdzic polled 38 percent against 18 percent for Tihic, the election commission said.
Tihic conceded defeat after party projections showed Silajdzic's lead was impossible to catch.
"Victory for Silajdzic," said the headline of Sarajevo's best-selling Dnevni Avaz daily.
The presidency has a Muslim, a Serb and a Croat member and the chair rotates. It shares executive powers with the government whose head it nominates.
Bosnia's peace overseers have viewed Silajdzic and Bosnian Serb Republic Prime Minister Milorad Dodik as the main culprits for inflammatory ethnic rhetoric in the run-up to the presidential and parliamentary vote.
Deeply-divided Bosnians turned out in big numbers to elect politicians who will lead the impoverished Balkan nation after international supervision ends next year.
Bosnians voted for the state presidency and parliament as well as the president and two vice-presidents in the Serb Republic. They also cast ballots for the assemblies of the two regions and 10 federation cantons.
Others results will be known later on Monday because of a complex process of counting the votes and allocating mandates for Bosnia's multi-layer government structure.
Nebojsa Radmanovic of Dodik's Alliance of Independent Social Democrats has all but secured his widely-expected election as the Serb member on the state presidency, with 56 percent of the votes so far.
Croat presidency member Ivo Miro Jovic of the main Croat Party, the Croatian Democratic Union, was running neck-to-neck with Zeljko Komsic of the opposition multi-ethnic Social Democratic Party.
Muslims and Croats favor strengthening the weak central government of Bosnia, whose population of about four million was divided into the two regions under the 1995 Dayton peace treaty.
The Croats have tentatively called for a third 'entity' if a strong central government is not achieved, while Serbs hotly oppose any further changes reducing their autonomy.
Western diplomats hope that flaring ethnic sentiment will cool down and that newly-elected leaders will find common ground on how to run Bosnia after the dismantling of the protectorate set up after the 1992-95 war.
The EU and NATO have no plans to withdraw 6,000 troops. But a successful handover of control following the withdrawal of peace overseer Christian Schwarz-Schilling's office next year would underscore Bosnia's ability to handle its own affairs.
EU president Finland said on Monday the European Union was looking at how quickly it can begin reducing its troop presence in Bosnia after the outcome of the elections is known.—Agencies