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Drnovsek set to lead Slovenia
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia -- Slovenia's Prime Minister Janez Drnovsek looks poised to become its new president. Exit polls from the second round of the election showed he has taken between 57.7 and 57.8 percent of the votes. The polls were from two TV channels and released minutes after voting ended at 1800 GMT on Sunday. "I am glad that I received support of so many voters and that we can together start a new chapter in Slovenia's history," Drnovsek told national TV channel. Drnovsek and his only rival, opposition candidate Barbara Brezigar, both support Slovenia's membership of the European Union and NATO which is expected in 2004. The exit poll gave her 42.2 percent. Brezigar, visibly disappointed, said she was nonetheless "happy because we achieved much more than we initially expected." Brezigar was running as an independent candidate but was supported by the opposition centre-right Social Democrats, conservative New Slovenia party and Drnovsek's junior coalition partner the People's Party. Drnovsek, 52, has been Slovenia's prime minister for most of the past 10 years. He is credited with piloting successful talks for Slovenia's membership of the EU and NATO. The tiny Alpine state of two million people rests between Italy, Austria and Croatia. It declared independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991 and was in November invited to join the EU and NATO. Drnovsek, the Liberal Democrats' leader, has been almost an emblem of Slovenia ever since it won independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991 after a 10-day war. An economist by training, he won his first term in 1992, and his second in 1996. The opposition briefly ousted him in mid-2000, but he returned to the post in elections six months later. His health has been fragile since he underwent surgery three years ago to have a cancerous kidney removed. Brezigar, who served as a justice minister in the short-lived conservative government in 2000, ran under the motto that Slovenia "needs new faces." An outsider only four months ago, when polls gave her seven percent of support, she won 31 percent of votes in the first round.
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