Serbian Election Runoff Appears Likely

Independent monitors predicted Sunday that an ally of late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic would come out slightly ahead of the pro-Western incumbent but neither would win an outright majority in Serbia's presidential election, forcing a runoff.

Radical Party leader Tomislav Nikolic had received about 39 percent of the first-round vote, compared with incumbent Boris Tadic's 35 percent, according to Belgrade's Center for Free Elections and Democracy, which independently counted votes alongside election officials.

"We can conclude that there will be a runoff," said Zoran Lucic, an official of the independent monitoring group. "The runoff will be …