Counting was due to begin on Thursday in crucial Northern Ireland elections, with early indications suggesting gains for hard-liners on both sides of the province's sectarian divide.

London and Dublin hope the poll will provide a platform for talks on reviving the British-ruled province's mothballed power-sharing assembly, but fear gains for the more extreme Protestant and Catholic parties could scupper their efforts.

N. Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Dr. Ian Paisley arrives to cast his vote in the elections to Northern Ireland's power sharing assembly, at a polling station in east Belfast, Nov.26, 2003.  [Reuters]

First indications suggested a lower turnout in the second election to the 108-seat assembly -- set up by the landmark 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, which aimed to end three decades of political and sectarian violence in which 3,600 people died.

Irish state broadcaster RTE said early analysis of an exit poll conducted by Millward Brown Ulster suggested the Irish Republican Army's political ally Sinn Fein pulling ahead of the moderate SDLP in the battle for votes from pro-Irish Catholics.

Among pro-British Protestant voters, the hardline Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was gaining on the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) but remained narrowly behind, RTE said.

But it cautioned the poll data was incomplete, covering only the first 900 interviews from 1,500 conducted during the day.

Whatever the result the assembly will not be able to convene in the near future -- Britain resumed direct rule of the province in October last year when a fragile coalition of the four main parties collapsed amid allegations of IRA spying.

UUP leader David Trimble, the province's former first minister, says he will not go back to power-sharing with Sinn Fein unless the IRA shows it is ready to fully disarm -- the issue which stymied efforts to revive the coalition last month.

POLLING PEACEFUL

Meanwhile, the DUP's firebrand leader Ian Paisley wants to tear up the Good Friday deal, and has said if his party holds the upper hand after the election there will be no negotiations with Sinn Fein, whose leader Gerry Adams he calls a "terrorist."

Voters have been urged to cast their ballots amid fears of a poor turnout.   [AP]

"The worst-case scenario is the DUP and Sinn Fein make such big gains we have a new freeze for several years," said Professor Paul Bew of Belfast's Queen's University.

More than 2,000 extra police had been on duty at polling stations around the province after a bomb attack on a British army base on Monday night heightened fears dissident Irish republican guerrillas might try to disrupt the election.

But polling day passed off peacefully, with only minor disturbances reported in the second city Londonderry where police briefly came under attack from stones and petrol bombs.

Counting was due to begin at 9 a.m. (0900 GMT) with the first results expected around early afternoon.

Northern Ireland's complex proportional representation voting system, which allows voters to list candidates in order of preference, involves multiple recounts, and the final results are not likely to be in before Friday afternoon or evening.

The last couple of seats in each of the 18 constituencies -- which each elect six legislators -- are likely to be decided on the redistribution of voters' later preferences, known as "transfers," making the final result difficult to call.

In the 1998 assembly election, the two moderate parties, the UUP and the SDLP, both polled around 21 per cent of first preference votes, with the UUP winning 28 seats and the SDLP 24.

The DUP secured 20 seats with 18 per cent of the vote, and Sinn Fein won 18 seats from 17 per cent.

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