Pro-Westerner tops Ukraine poll

Yanukovych and Yushchenko face a 21 November showdown

Ukraine's opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko narrowly won the first round of the presidential elections, official results show.

Mr Yushchenko won 39.87% of the vote against Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's 39.32%.

Western-leaning Mr Yushchenko and Mr Yanukovych, who is backed by outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and Russia, will now face a run-off on 21 November.

The final count was announced 10 days after the 31 October ballot.

Poll monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) had said that the vote failed to meet international standards.

Viktor v Viktor

The official results announced by Ukraine's Central Election Commission confirmed that none of the 24 candidates received the necessary 50% of the vote to win outright.

But the results for the first time put Mr Yushchenko narrowly in the lead. Most ballot papers were counted last week and put Mr Yanukovych in the lead.

Mr Yanukovych favours reactivating political and economic ties with Russia which have weakened since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, whereas Mr Yushchenko wants to steer Ukraine closer to the European Union and Nato.

The final count was announced just hours before the legal deadline for publishing the results.

No campaigning was allowed until this final result was known, the BBC's Helen Fawkes in Kiev reports.

Allies of both Mr Yushchenko and Mr Yanukovych have suggested that the Central Election Commission has deliberately delayed releasing this information amid allegations of election violations, our correspondent says.