Kravchuk, Kuchma Lead Voting in Ukraine

KIEV -- President Leonid Kravchuk and former prime minister Leonid Kuchma finished on top in Ukraine's presidential election and are headed for a run-off clash. Unofficial preliminary results from Sunday's first round went according to form, with both contenders certain to fall short of the 50 percent of the vote required for outright victory. Kravchuk, who led Ukraine to independence in 1991, swept the nationalist west. Kuchma, an industrialist who wants closer ties with Russia, led in the conservative, Russian-speaking east. Two unofficial counts compiled by the nationalist Rukh party and by Kravchuk's campaign team produced nearly the same outcome, giving the president about 40 percent of the vote and his challenger about 35. Neither of the two contenders appeared in public. But both camps were confident of victory. "We are already working out a strategy for the final round," said a member of Kravchuk's campaign team. "The figures were a bit disappointing in central Ukraine."An official at Kuchma's headquarters said the outcome "fits in with predictions. I think we can win in a straight run-off."The official count was proceeding with enormous delays, and nearly 24 hours after the polls closed only nine of 25 districts had been tallied. According to results provided by local returning officers, Kravchuk captured 85 percent of the vote in the western regions of Lviv and Ternopil and 70 percent in his home district of Rivne. Kuchma was leading two to one in Dnipropetrovsk, where he was once head of the world's largest missile factory. He was reported to have opened up a big lead in the coal and steel center of Donetsk, in the nearby industrial city of Lugansk and in the Black Sea port of Odessa. In Crimea, where ethnic Russians are clamoring for closer ties or reunification with Moscow, Kuchma had 82 percent. Predicting the outcome of the run-off depended on how supporters of the five eliminated candidates would redirect their votes. Kravchuk's situation looked far from easy. Closest to the two leaders were the Socialist chairman of parliament, Olexander Moroz, who scored well in the east, and market reformer Volodymyr Lanovy, whose support is confined largely to the capital. Moroz's votes could be split -- Communists could swing to Kuchma and rural supporters to Kravchuk. Lanovy's backers could do the same, divided between business people switching to technocrat Kuchma and liberals supporting Kravchuk as a Ukrainian patriot. Kravchuk won a landslide victory in December 1991 on the same day that Ukrainians voted nine to one in favor of independence from the Soviet Union. Praised in the West for persuading a reluctant parliament to give up former Soviet nuclear weapons, Kravchuk portrayed himself as an experienced statesman commanding respect for the young Ukrainian state. Kuchma based his campaign on calls to speed up market reforms and forge an economic union with Russia to pull Ukraine out of deep crisis.