Ukrainian reformist ahead in polls

A voter checks the list of candidates

KIEV, Ukraine -- A reformist's party is ahead in Ukrainian elections which have been marred by violence and allegations of fraud, exit polls say.

Preliminary results for Sunday's elections are not expected until early Monday but a leading poll firm has Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party with a clear lead gaining 25 percent of the party-list vote, The Associated Press reported.

The parliamentary elections are seen as a test for President Leonid Kuchma who has been in power for the past eight years and faces presidential election in two years' time.

The Communist Party is placed second with 20.5 percent and the pro-presidential bloc, For United Ukraine, third

with 10.6 percent.

Former minister Julia Tymoshenko, a fierce Kuchma critic, was placed fourth with 7.9 percent of the vote, with the pro-presidential Social Democratic Party United fifth on 7.1 percent and the Socialist Party taking 6.1 percent.

Kuchma says everything has been done to guarantee a fair election

The exit poll for 7,000 candidates representing 33 parties, was commissioned by a western-funded organisation called Renaissance.

Thirty seven million Ukrainians had the chance to pick 450 new members of the Verkhovna Rada.

As of 3 p.m. (1200 GMT, five hours before the polls were to close, 39.6 percent of the registered voters had cast ballots, the Central Election Commission said.

The polling groups interviewed 18,000 voters at random as they left voter stations throughout the country, and was carried out by Ukraine's leading polling firms KIIS (the Kiev International Institute of Sociology), Democratic Initiative and SOCIS.

A separate exit poll of about 8,000 people, conducted by the Ukrainian Centre for Social Research and the Ukrainian Centre of Political Management, found similar results.

Accusations of corruption were stoked on the eve of the election when opposition party candidate Mykola Shkriblyak was shot dead by unidentified gunmen.

Almost 1,000 foreign observers, led by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, are present for the polls in Ukraine, a fertile, mineral-rich former Soviet Union state.

Critics have alleged election-rigging and intimidation.

Ex-Deputy Prime Minister Tymoshenkoa, and leader of the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) centrist opposition party, has cited violations and media restrictions in her criticism of the election.

Last month another candidate was killed, also in Ivano-Frankivsk, but police believe it was a business issue.

Kuchma and his party, For United Ukraine, have denied allegations of electoral corruption, saying all has been done to ensure it is fair.