2009-07-04 11:26:03 -

TIRANA, Albania (AP) - Albania's opposition Socialists on Saturday threatened to hold street protests after election authorities declared Prime Minister Sali Berisha's Democrats had won enough seats in last weekend's election to form a government.
The Balkan country, which joined NATO in April, had been under intense international pressure to ensure last Sunday's vote was fair and free of the fraud that marred the six previous polls since Albania's communist regime fell in 1990.
Election officials said late Friday that Democrats won 46.69 percent, giving them 71 seats in the 140-seat parliament _ the exact number needed to form a government.
Tirana Mayor Edi Rama's opposition Socialists won 45.36 percent, or 65 seats, with the SAI coalition in third place with 5.56 percent and four seats, Central Elections Commission spokesman Leonard Olli said.
But authorities are re-counting the ballots from some polling stations following complaints about procedures there.
The Socialists insist the electoral commission cannot declare that the Democrats won 71 seats while recounts are still pending. They accuse Berisha of trying to influence the electoral commission's outcome of the vote, and have threatened to hold demonstrations.
«I appeal to Berisha to abandon the idea of imposing himself on the Albanian people ... unless he wants to meet and face the people in the street,» said Gramoz Ruci, a senior Socialist politician and also a candidate in the Fier, one of the districts where the Socialists dispute the Democrat's win of the district's parliamentary seat.
On Thursday, a day before election authorities declared he was an outright winner, Berisha had conceded that his victory was not decisive and that he was open to coalition talks with smaller parties to form a government.
Both main parties ran on a similar platform, pledging to lift Albania out of poverty and secure its ambition to join the European Union.

Election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that while there were improvements and fewer irregularities in this year's voting, violations such as widespread family voting persisted.
Full final results are now expected next week, after all disputed ballots are counted.
Based on the partial count, the election commission said 50 percent of Albania's 3.1 million registered voters, or 1.55 million people, had cast ballots Sunday. That was about 150,000 more votes than in the 2005 elections.