Incumbent Leads in Presidential Voting

Ukrainian President Leonid D. Kuchma looked well placed to hang on to his job for another five years after establishing an early election lead over Communist Party chief Petro Simonenko. Initial returns from the voting, billed as a choice between continued pro-market reforms and a return to the Soviet past, showed Kuchma leading comfortably but unlikely to win outright in the first round. Returns based on 17% of the ballots cast showed Kuchma with 37.05%, ahead of Simonenko’s 22.02%. A second-round runoff between the two will take place Nov. 14 if neither receives more than 50% of the votes.