MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguay's Broad Front proclaims Vazquez as presidential candidate.

The leader of Uruguay's leftist Broad Front (FA) coalition, oncologist Tabare Vazquez, was announced at the organization's political convention Sunday as its presidential candidate for the general elections in October 2004.

Vazquez, who ran for president in the last two elections in 1994 and 1999, will try again, this time with Senator Rodolfo Nin Nova on his ticket, even though this choice sparked a fiery debate during the convention.

Vazquez's candidacy will most likely be endorsed during the primaries in June 2004, when other candidates representing the leftist coalition can try for the presidential bid, an unlikely possibility given Vazquez's dominance within the coalition.

In the last elections, in October 1999, Tabare Vazquez received the most votes but was defeated in an election runoff by Jorge Batlle of the Colorado Party.

Delegates from all sectors which make up FA coalition took part in the convention which began Friday, including socialists - representing the majority and headed by Vazquez - communists, Marxist-Leninists, the former Tupamaro guerrillas, moderates and independents, among others.

The FA, founded in 1971, has controlled the town council of Montevideo, where half the country's 3.3 million residents live, since 1990.

According to a survey of likely voters released on Saturday, the FA, associated with the social democratic New Space party, received the support of 48 percent of the respondents, followed by the National - or "White" - party with 18.5 percent, and the ruling Colorado Party came in third with 14 percent of likely votes.

Twenty percent of the people surveyed were undecided.

The governing "Colorados" and the "Whites," who were united under Uruguay's governing coalition until last year, have not nominated presidential candidates.