Sudan ? Sudan conducted its first multiparty elections in a quarter century Sunday, which will determine whether President Omar al-Bashir wins another term despite his indictment on charges of war crimes in Darfur.

The vote is supposed to bring a democratically elected government, prepare the ground for a vital referendum on South Sudan independence and begin healing the wounds of the Darfur conflict. But major opposition parties boycotted it, claiming it was unfair.

In addition to the president, the country was electing a national parliament, local governors and parliaments and the president of the semiautonomous government of South Sudan.

The elections, which run through Tuesday, are supposed to be an essential step in a 2005 peace plan that ended two decades of civil war between the mostly Arab and Muslim north and rebels in the Christian-animist south. The conflict claimed some 2 million lives.