BERLIN, Sept 22: Germany’s national election hung in the balance Sunday after first estimates showed the race in one of the most fiercely fought polls since World War II was too close to call.

Although early official estimates put Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats narrowly behind the opposition conservatives, his coalition partners the Greens did better than expected and could provide him with a majority in the 600-seat parliament.

But three initial estimates said the Christian Union alliance of conservative candidate Edmund Stoiber was emerging as the strongest party and was possibly in a position to form a coalition with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP).

The race was dominated by the weak state of the German economy and high unemployment as well as fears of war in Iraq.

The official estimates and all three exit polls showed the Greens in third place after strong gains over the last election four years ago, while the FDP, with whom Stoiber has said he would like to form the next government, were fourth.

Stoiber, 60, was quick to claim victory at a brief appearance after estimates gave his Christian Union (CDU/CSU) between 38.9 and 39.5 percent of the vote.

“One thing is clear: we have won the election,” he told jubilant supporters in Berlin. “The big party of the center is back.”

But Schroeder, 58, also saw victory within his grasp, saying he saw “a good chance” of continuing in government after the cliffhanger election that gave his party between 37.3 percent and 38.1 percent.

“We have nothing to be ashamed of,” he told cheering supporters in Berlin.

“We have a good chance of continuing our policies. The way it is looking, we will continue them.”

Among the key issues at stake in the heated campaign were how to reinvigorate Europe’s biggest economy which is currently flagging, how to reduce chronic unemployment, now above four million, and the future of rocky relations with the United States amid fears of a possible war in Iraq.

Stoiber has campaigned as a man able to bring down joblessness and repair the damage he said was done to the national economy by Schroeder’s ruling coalition.

That platform won Stoiber, the Bavarian state premier, a substantial lead in opinion polls, up to five percent over the SPD in early August.

However Schroeder’s hands-on handling of a devastasting floods crisis last month and his categoric refusal to join a US strike on Iraq brought a remarkable reversal.—AFP