Pro-EU Party Claims Win in Malta

VALLETTA, Malta — The leader of Malta’s Nationalist Party claimed victory Sunday in a parliamentary election and said he would move quickly to strengthen ties between this tiny island nation and the rest of Europe.

Eddie Fenech Adami said he would revive Malta’s bid for membership in the 15-member European Union, an effort that had been frozen by the Labor Party of Prime Minister Alfred Sant.

Sant, conceding he had failed in his gamble that an early election would strengthen his party’s one-vote majority in the 65-seat parliament, resigned, allowing for Fenech Adami to be quickly sworn in as the new leader of Malta.

Official results of Saturday’s election were expected today.

About 95% of the 278,000 eligible voters turned out for the election, called three years early in Malta, five islands 60 miles south of Sicily.

“I have been advised that the projections will confirm our win,” said Fenech Adami, whose back-to-back terms as conservative premier from 1987 to 1996 had followed 16 years of what was then a largely anti-Western Labor government.