PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- Prime Minister Hun Sen's party on Monday claimed victory in general elections, saying it expects to win around 73 of the 123 seats in the National Assembly.
Independent observers monitoring the count from Sunday's vote also indicated the Cambodian People's Party was on its way to another five-year term, which had been widely expected. Official results are due Aug. 8.
If confirmed, the results would give Hun Sen's party eight more seats than it held in the previous parliament, but it will have to form another coalition government. Cambodian law requires a party to hold two-thirds of the seats, or 83, to govern on its own.
Largely averting the violence that marred 1998 elections, the latest vote was seen as a further step in Cambodia's efforts to leave behind decades of unrest -- including a long civil war and the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime of 1975-79, during which 1.7 million people died.
International donors contribute millions of dollars every year to Cambodia, one of the poorest nations in Southeast Asia, and they pay for more than half of the government's expenditure.
Khieu Kanharith, a government spokesman, said the royalist Funcinpec party was likely to win 26 seats and the Sam Rainsy Party 24 seats. Funcinpec was Hun Sen's coalition partner in the outgoing government.
Thun Saray, of the local monitoring group Comfrel, said the trend showing Hun Sen's party as the winner was unlikely to change.
"Even if it does, it will not be a significant change, probably just between three to five seats," he said.
While trailing in the nationwide vote, the opposition Sam Rainsy Party appeared to be winning most of the 12 seats from the capital, Phnom Penh. The party had accused Hun Sen's supporters of interfering in Sunday's voting, but party leader Sam Rainsy said Monday that the electoral process was "so far not so bad."
Hun Sen's party has governed since being put in power by the Vietnamese army, which ousted the Khmer Rouge in 1979.
After the United Nations brokered a peace accord in 1991, the first parliamentary elections were held in 1993. Funcinpec won, but was pressured into forming a coalition with Hun Sen.
Hun Sen wrested control in a 1997 coup. His party won the second elections in 1998 after a campaign that saw killings and widespread intimidation of opposition supporters.
A Cambodian election official estimated about 80 percent of the 6.3 million eligible voters cast ballots Sunday, a lower turnout than the two previous elections.
