Armenia’s Rulers Winning Disputed Vote : Elections: Dominant coalition leads count as foreign observers question exclusion of opposition parties, other tactics.

Armenia’s ruling party appeared headed for victory Thursday in the nation’s first post-Soviet elections, but international observers said it wasn’t a fair fight.

“Our organization stands for free and fair elections, and we have a problem with this one,” said a Western poll watcher in a telephone interview from the Armenian capital, Yerevan.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, whose observers were among the 200 international delegates sent to monitor the voting for a new Parliament and on adopting a new constitution, said the balloting generally went smoothly. There were no reports of violence.

But the delegation objected to the government’s exclusion of nine opposition parties, the broadcasting and distribution of biased information to voters and poorly organized voting procedures. “The elections may only be considered by international standards as generally free, but not fair,” the OSCE delegation said in a statement.

Other observers called that statement too mild. Most of the problems, including disqualifying opposition parties on arbitrary grounds and alleged intimidation of candidates, occurred in the weeks and months before the election, they said.

But evidence of vote-tampering in Wednesday’s balloting was also reported in a few areas.

When the ballot box in one precinct was opened Wednesday evening, one international observer spotted a half-inch-thick stack of paper “that looked like it had come out of a copy machine.” The papers were not folded like other ballots and the writing on each one was similar, the observer said.

An Armenian election official took half the stack, but the observer counted the other half and found that every one of the ballots was marked for the Armenian National Movement, the key party in the pro-government Republican election bloc.

Complete results will not be available until today, but at least 60% of the 2.6 million voters had cast ballots, enough to validate the election. Election officials said preliminary tallies showed the Republican bloc appeared headed for a landslide.

The new constitution, which would give President Levon A. Ter-Petrosyan sweeping powers, also appeared to have passed.

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Opposition leaders, who opposed the constitution as too authoritarian, accused the government of unfair tactics in campaigning for its passage. International observers confirmed that the Central Election Committee, which is supposed to be neutral, had printed 200,000 copies of the draft constitution and urged a “yes” vote in Wednesday’s referendum. The committee also printed posters in favor of the constitution, which were seen hanging in precincts while voting was taking place.

The OSCE statement also noted hearing a significant number of accusations of violence and intimidation aimed at encouraging non-governmental candidates to quit the election.

However, one observer cautioned against placing the blame for the election irregularities exclusively on the government. “I’m convinced that different people on both sides were forging signatures, cheating and engaging in intimidation,” the source said. “The opposition parties aren’t exactly good guys, either.”

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After seven years of war with Azerbaijan and a crippling blockade imposed by its neighbors, Armenia’s economy is one of the weakest among the former Soviet republics. However, a yearlong cease-fire in the battle over the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh appears to have boosted Ter-Petrosyan’s popularity. Armenia has a warm relationship with Russia and is the third-largest per-capita recipient of U.S. aid, after Israel and Egypt.

The Republican bloc has promised to continue Ter-Petrosyan’s program of privatization and a fast transition to a market economy. Most of the opposition parties campaigned on a program of slower reform, arguing that raising living standards for the impoverished Armenian population was the top priority for this nearly 4-year-old nation. The leading opposition bloc, the National Democratic Union, supports free-market reforms but accuses Ter-Petrosyan of resorting to increasingly undemocratic methods.

The OSCE statement congratulated the Armenian government for holding multi-party elections, but said the contest had been marred by the exclusion of key opposition parties.