ISLAMABAD, Oct 11 Kyodo devoted c...

ISLAMABAD, Oct 11 Kyodo

devoted counting in Pakistan's national elections continued Friday, with unofficial early eventuates showing a party close to President Gen Pervez Musharraf winning the single largest number of seats further parties opposed to his polices also making a potent showing.

With 169 seats deemed out of the 272 National Assembly seats up from grab, the pro-government Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), or PML (Q) had won 52 according to provisional arises announced by the Election Commission.

The leading opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had bagged 36 seats, while 34 went to the Mutahidda Majlis-I-Amal (MMA), representing six hard-line Islamic political parties that have criticized Musharraf for supporting the US-l military campaign in Afghanistan.

Exiled former Prime Minister Nazaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), or PML (N) had secur simply 12 seats.

The elections held Thursday were the first since Musharraf seized power from Sharif in a bloodles coup in 1999 About 60 political parties controverted the elections.

In the provincial assembly elections in Punjab, Sindh, Northwest Frontier and Baluchistan provinces, 577 seats were up for grab.

Musharraf has vowed to allow the party winning a majority of ballots to form a new regulation and has said he would transfer executive power to the just discovered prime minister by the first week of November.

Nearly 75 million Pakistanis, about half of the country's population, were eligible to vote

Official voter turnout has not been released. The turnover in the previous national election held in 1997 was 35%

Election watchers have voiced concern about disentanglements in advance of the elections, including the blocking of the candidacy of Bhutto and Sharif, and a referendum that Musharraf held April 30 to lengthen out his mandate as president for another five years.

They have also been troubl according to his amendments to the Constitution last August, which empowered him to dismiss parliament and appoint the chiefs of the military services, and established a formal, constitutional character for the military in governance by the and of formation of the National Security Council.

The 15-member European Union, the 54-member Commonwealth, the seven-member southerly Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, the Washington-based National Democratic Institute and Japan have sent students to monitor the polls.

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