LJUBLJANA (AFP) - Slovenia's centre-right opposition coalition won a narrow upset victory in the first national elections since the former Yugoslav republic joined the EU, ending 12 years of nearly continuous control by liberals.
The Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) and their ally, the conservative New Slovenia (NSi) party, took 38 percent of the vote compared to the outgoing centre-left coalition's 37 percent, the electoral commission said after 99 percent of votes were counted.
The SDS-led group would take 38 seats in the 90-member parliament and three parties that up the government, 37 seats.
After Prime Minister Anton Rop admitted defeat, SDS leader Janez Jansa said if called upon to form the next government he would pursue a "new policy" domestically but keep foreign policy in the new EU and NATO member on course.
"Slovenia stepped today on a new way ... that new policy, if we get to create the new government, will be a policy of continuity for all the good things done so far, and a policy of changes where the managing of the state was not aimed at progress."
"Our foreign policy will be based on our alliances, the relations we recently established and which grant us our future."
Rop's Liberal Democracy party (LDS), which has held power in the former Yugoslav state for nearly 12 years, managed to take only 22.82 percent.
The prime minister saw the writing on the wall shortly after voting closed at 7:00 pm (1700 GMT), telling journalists: "It seems very likely that the Liberal Democracy party (LDS) will move to the opposition. We are firmly decided to work hard within the opposition."
The election commission said just over 60 percent of some 1.6 million registered voters had cast their ballots.
Coalition talks were meant to start on Monday, but the close result means that neither bloc had taken enough votes to form a government on its own.
Slovenia's President Janez Drnovsek, who has to appoint a candidate to put together a new government, earlier Sunday predicted the lack of a clear majority will make his task difficult.
"It will be harder for me to choose the candidate for creating a new government and he himself (the candidate) will have a tougher task when preparing a coalition," Drnovsek said.
Analysts have said the centre-right managed to exploit general weariness with the long LDS rule as well as to eat into the prime minister's support in the past year and a half by challenging it on issues with a nationalist undertone.
These include a row about building a mosque in the capital Ljubljana, and a referendum on restoring citizenship to some 18,000 people which hailed from other former Yugoslav states that were wiped off the register when the communist federation boke up.
"We will replace the policy of exclusion that has characterised the last 12 years with a policy of including all those that want to help the country," Jansa said Sunday night.
Voting took place against the backdrop of a limited strike by journalists and a new twist in the country's troubled relations with neighbouring Croatia.
Zagreb chose election day to create a protected fishing and ecological area off its Adriatic coast, which Slovenia has complained would leave it without access to international shipping waters.
Rop's handling of long-standing territorial disputes with Croatia was criticised by the SDS in the election campaign, along with his handling of the economy, road infrastructure problems and pension issues.
The prime minister has countered that his government helped to set Slovenia on the path of becoming one of the EU's most developed countries.
But he already lost support in June's European parliamentary elections, with the centre-right taking four of the country's seven seats in body.