The former foreign minister, Mr George Iacovou, edged ahead in Cyprus's presidential election yesterday but the poll produced no winner and a runoff was set for February 15th.
With all ballots counted, Mr Iacovou won 40.6 per cent of the vote, narrowly leading over the incumbent conservative, President Glafcos Clerides, who got 40.1 per cent.
The veteran Socialist Party leader, Mr Vassos Lyssarides, emerged as the likely power-broker with 10.6 per cent of the vote. He has avoided indicating who he will support in the second round and was immediately wooed by both frontrunners.
The election is seen as crucial to Cyprus's future, with a new effort to reunite the divided Mediterranean island expected in March and upcoming European union membership talks a month later.
Michael Jansen adds:
Almost 450,000 Greek Cypriots went to the polls yesterday.
More than 25,000 of the voters were 18-years-olds going to the polls for the first time after the voting age was lowered to accommodate conscripted youths, who, until the change was made, were considered "old enough to die on the Green Line defending their country but not old enough to choose their leaders".
Since voting is compulsory, Greek Cypriots flocked to polling stations in neighbourhood schools throughout the day. They voted in family groups: ancient dowagers in black and bent old men leading their middle-aged children and fresh-faced grandchildren. Refugees lined up at stations labelled with the names of the towns and villages they fled in 1974 when the Turkish army invaded the island.
Two bus loads of elderly Greek Cypriots from enclaves in the Turkish-occupied Karpass Peninsula made the three-hour journey to the Green Line where they crossed into the republic, cast their votes at four special stations and were given lunch by the Red Cross before returning home.
In the UN-controlled buffer zone villages of Pyla and Athienou, gardai serving with the UN supervised the balloting.
Members of the small Maronite and Armenian communities took part in the election, but not the 200-odd Turkish Cypriots who stayed on in the south and are citizens of the Republic of Cyprus. Mr Ibrahim Aziz, a staunch bi-communalist, was bitter about the fact that he has reached the age of 60 and never cast his vote. "You can't help feeling sadness . . . when one of your most basic rights is denied." But he admitted that this would require a constitutional amendment too sensitive to be contemplated while the island remained divided.
The month-long campaign focused on the eternal dispute with the Turkish Cypriots and Turkey. All the candidates pledged to proceed with negotiations for the reunification of the island in a bizonal, bicommunal federation although Mr Clerides claimed he should be re-elected to complete the task begun in his first term.