SARAJEVO, Oct 6: Bosnians defied international pressure and gave strong support to nationalist hardliners in crucial weekend elections, but reformist leaders said on Sunday they still expected to form a moderate coalition government in the weeks ahead.

The nationalists who led Bosnia into war 10 years ago claimed success in Saturday’s election in a major blow to Western efforts to steer the country out of its violent past and toward integration with Europe.

Reformists blamed low turnout and apathy for their poor showing, but analysts said pro-West parties had failed to solve any of the country’s massive social and economic problems since they gained the upper hand in parliament two years ago.

Unofficial results showed Serb and Croat voters stuck to their traditional nationalist leadership while Muslims turned away from the reformist multi-ethnic party which led the first moderate coalition government after the 2000 elections.

With 57 parties vying for three parliaments and four presidential posts, there were no clear winners and the final shape of any new central government will not be known for days or even weeks.

Officials said turnout was the lowest since the 1992-95 war, when the country’s Croats, Muslims and Serbs turned on each other with a viciousness not seen in Europe since World War II.

The European Union and the United States had warned that a vote for the same nationalists that instigated the conflict would mean economic isolation, stagnation and failure.

But the harshly worded threats from Brussels and Washington appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

Unofficial figures from the main political parties indicated no broad swing in favour of reformists, although there were slight shifts in both directions.

“The war ended on the battlefield but it never ended politically and not with any national reconciliation... So we shouldn’t be surprised the nationalist parties are still here,” said Mark Wheeler, an analyst with the International Crisis Group.

Bosnia was split into two highly autonomous entities after the war — the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb-run Republika Srpska — with weak central institutions and a tripartite presidency including Serb, Croat and Muslim members.

The multi-ethnic leftist Social Democratic Party (SDP), the leader of the moderate Alliance for Change ruling coalition, conceded it was disappointed with the results and forecast a nationalist clean sweep of the largely symbolic presidency.

“The troika (of nationalists) cannot have a majority in Bosnia and it will leave room for the alliance parties and other pro-reform parties to gain a majority” in the central parliament, said SDP chief Zlatko Lagumdzija.

With no clear winner at the central level, a bare-knuckled political fight will be waged in back-room negotiations on coalitions in the coming weeks.

Analysts said wartime prime minister Haris Silajdzic, an enigmatic veteran of Bosnian politics who allied himself to the SDP only to withdraw from public life last year, would be the “kingmaker” in the coming discussions.

Silajdzic has refused to rule out any coalition partners, even among the nationalist parties such as the Muslim Party for Democratic Action, which appeared to have won support from dissatisfied former SDP voters.

His centrist Party for Bosnia-Herzegovina (SBiH) advocates eventual reunification of the country’s two entities, a proposal which is vehemently opposed by Serbs.

While a moderate coalition appeared to be the most likely outcome at the central level and in the Muslim-Croat Federation, the nationalist Serb Democratic Party (SDS) was set to keep its dominance over the Republika Srpska.

The SDS, founded by wanted war criminal Radovan Karadzic, has been the main Serb party in Bosnia since the start of the war.

SDS leader Dragan Kalinic said the party would remain the “leading political party in the RS and its strong guardian”.

European observers said the elections, the fourth since the war and the first to be locally organised, showed Bosnians were capable of implementing the “basic rules of democracy”.

“I hope therefore and urge the newly elected politicians to do at least the same in the main political fields,” said Doris Pack, representative of the European parliament.—AFP