Cameron courts Lib Dems as UK polls produce hung parliament

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Majid Al Mualla

LONDON, May 7 (AP/BBC): The Conservatives and Labour jockeyed for the support of Britain's smaller parties Friday after a close-fought election that, for the first time in almost four decades, produced no outright winner, resulting in a hung parliament.
The Conservative Party, which won the largest number of seats but still was short of a majority, demanded the chance to govern and already made an offer to Liberal Democrats to form the government.
The Tory leader David Cameron said he wanted to make a "big open and comprehensive offer" to the Lib Dems.
Earlier, Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg dented Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown's hopes of staying in power by calling on the Tories to try to form a government, without indicating whether his centrist party would be willing to join a coalition.
Labour leader Gordon Brown has already stressed his party's "common ground" with the third biggest party.
The Tories got 305 seats, just short of the 326 needed for an outright majority. Labour bagged 258 seats and the Lib Dems 57.
Past practice under Britain's unwritten constitution sees the sitting prime minister in a hung parliament having the right to make the first attempt at forming a ruling coalition.
But Mr Cameron said Mr Brown had "lost his mandate to govern" after the Conservatives won the most votes and the most seats and Nick Clegg, leader of the third biggest party the Lib Dems, said he believed the result gave the Tories the right to seek to govern first.
The Conservative leader said: "We need a government that reassures the international markets. We need policies that will bring economic recovery. And we need a government that understands that great change is needed in order to restore faith in our political system."
He said talks would begin with other parties. He said one option was to offer them reassurances about certain policy areas - then try to govern as a minority Conservative government.
But he said he was prepared to consider alternatives and it might be possible "to have stronger, more stable, more collaborative government than that".
"I want to make a big, open and comprehensive offer to the Liberal Democrats. I want us to work together in tackling our country's big and urgent problems - the debt crisis, our deep social problems and our broken political system," he said.
While there were policy disagreements between the Tories and Lib Dems - including on the European Union and defence - there were also "many areas of common ground".
The Conservatives agreed with the Lib Dem on ideas such as a "pupil premium" in schools, a low-carbon economy and shared opposition to Labour's ID cards scheme.
But he did not pledge a referendum on changing the voting system - a key concern of the Lib Dems - instead offering an "all party committee of inquiry on political and electoral reform".