LONDON - The Conservatives said on Friday they would try to form a government with the smaller Liberal Democrats after winning the most seats in the closest parliamentary election in a generation.
While the Conservatives failed to gain an outright majority in the 650-seat House of Commons, creating the first "hung parliament" since 1974, they were comfortably ahead of the Labour party, in power for 13 years.
Conservative leader David Cameron said Britain needed a government to reassure jittery markets that it was serious about tackling the deficit, which exceeds 11 percent of national output.
He said he was prepared to explore the possibility of running a minority government, but that he would make a coalition offer to the centrist Lib Dems, the third force in British politics.
Speaking earlier outside his Downing Street residence, Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats should take time to try to reach an agreement on forming a government.
Brown said he would speak to the LibDems if those talks proved unsuccessful, and stressed his support for electoral reform, a key LibDem demand.
Cameron, a 43-year-old former public relations executive, has said his party would make deeper and faster spending cuts than Labour, which has been in power since 1997.
Any new government faces the daunting and potentially unpopular task of bringing down a record budget deficit of 163 billion pounds for fiscal 2009/10.
Cameron described it as the worst inheritance faced by any incoming government for at least 60 years.
Bookmakers saw a better than one-in-three chance of another British election this year, a scenario that would be likely to spook the markets further.
In a see-saw day for markets, sterling pared losses against the dollar after Cameron held out the prospect of talks with other parties.
With results in 637 constituencies declared, the Conservatives were on 301 seats, followed by Labour on 255 and the LibDems on 54.
The lack of an outright winner able to command 326 votes in the House of Commons brings smaller parties into play.
While LibDem Leader Nick Clegg was disappointed with his party's showing, he called on the Conservatives, as the largest party, to try to form the next government.
But he and other senior party officials indicated their support might be conditional on reforming an electoral process that is stacked against smaller parties.
"It seems this morning that it is the Conservative party that has more votes and more seats, though not an absolute majority, and that is why I think it is now for the Conservative party to prove that it is capable of seeking to govern in the national interest," Clegg told reporters in London.
The BBC calculated the Conservatives had taken 36 percent of the overall vote, Labour 29 percent and the LibDems 23 percent.
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