AFP - The party backing South Ossetia's leader Eduard Kokoity was on course Sunday to sweep legislative elections and tighten the grip of the strongman president on the Georgian rebel region.

Initial results showed Yedinstvo (Unity) well ahead in the vote in the mountainous rebel region that was the subject of a war last year between Moscow and Tbilisi and is recognized as independent by Russia and Nicaragua alone.

The elections were marked by a sidelining of the local opposition who accuse Kokoity of seeking a loyal parliamentary majority to push through an amendment allowing him to run again for office when his second term lapses in 2011.

Based on an initial count of almost eight percent of the vote, South Ossetia's central election commission said Unity had polled 58.62 percent while the People's Party, also largely uncritical of Kokoity, won 20.35 percent.

The Communists were third with 14.6 percent of the vote. Final results were due at 0600 GMT on Monday with officials estimating the turnout at 80 percent.

Only four parties are competing for the 34 seats in the parliament and the central election commission barred the only two parties not loyal to Kokoity.

The name of Unity also bears more that a passing resemblance to Russia's ruling party Edinaya Rossiya (United Russia) and it even used pictures of United Russia party leader Boris Gryzlov on its campaign literature.

But Russia -- which outraged the West by recognising South Ossetia as independent in the wake of the August war with Georgia -- has said South Ossetia should not amend the existing term limits in its constitution.

Kokoity said it was too early to say whether he planned to run again to lead the region of 50,000 people although he did not rule out that possibility.

"There are two and half years left till then and a lot left to do. We are working and working now. I am not thinking about it yet," he said in an interview with AFP.

"With what happened in August we need three to four years to rebuild," Kokoity said.

Opposition activists said voting would not make a difference. "I plan to sit at home. There's nothing we can do," said Alan Gassiyev, an opposition leader, calling the polls "completely illegal."

Critics accuse Kokoity, an ex-wrestling champion, of muzzling opponents and stealing the money sent from Russia.

As the reconstruction in the province stalled this winter, the opposition also accuses the separatist leader and his circle of diverting lorries carrying construction material and humanitarian aid to traffic the goods in Russia.

But despite the slow pace of reconstruction in the republic many praise Kokoity for his leadership during the August conflict.

"Kokoity has done a lot for the people of South Ossetia, he's fought 20 years for this country," Angela Tedeyeva, a 32-year-old teacher, said as she cast her ballot.

Georgia ridiculed the vote, with the country's reintegration minister Temur Iakobashvili saying the elections were "nothing but clownery, a farce and a redistribution of a criminal power."

But Kokoity insisted the elections were in strict accordance with law, saying the polls were "a maturity test for the small independent state."

His domestic critics are concerned that the high number of polling stations in the villages which were used to be populated by ethnic Georgians and which are now nearly empty will be used to falsify the election results.

As the row over Kokoity's push for a third term threatens to become an embarrassment for Moscow, there are signs the Kremlin is scaling back its support for the South Ossetian leader.

Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Russian presidential administration, said on Russian television this month that South Ossetia should not change the existing term limits in its constitution.

Moscow and Tbilisi fought a brief but intense war last August over the region, which had enjoyed de facto independence since the early 1990s thanks to tacit Russian support.