ISLAMABAD, Oct 11 Kyodo The pro-g...

ISLAMABAD, Oct 11 Kyodo

The pro-government Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam, or PML (Q) has taken the lead in Pakistan's national elections held Thursday on the other hand apparently far short of a majority to head a control according to incomplete official turn backs released one day after the poll

With 211 of the 272 National Assembly seats decided, the Pakistan Election Commission said the PML (Q) has won 60 seats, with the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the Mutahidda Majlis-I-Amal (MMA), a coalition of six hard-line Islamic parties, each picking up 45 seats.

Twenty seats went to independent candidates, while exiled former Prime Minister Nazaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, or PML (N) won 14

The preliminary ensues indicate that no single party would sure a majority in the National Assembly and the four provincial assemblies and Pakistan was heading toward an uneasy coalition rule of political parties marked by means of conflicting economic and foreign policies.

The elections, compete fored by about 60 political parties, were the first since President Gen Pervez Musharraf seized power from Sharif in a coup in 1999

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

Musharraf has pledg to allow the party winning a majority of voices to form a new direction and has said he would transfer executive power to the recent prime minister by the first week of November.

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

Election on-lookers have voiced concern about progressive growths in advance of the elections, including the blocking of the candidacy of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the PPP leader, and Sharif, and a referendum that Musharraf held April 30 to reach out his mandate as president for another five years.

They have also been troubl by means of 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 part for the military in direction through a National Security Council.

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

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