this paper are (i) a construction by which, for a given bounded treewidth, a general MS graph property P is transformed to an MS binary tree property r(P), and a general labeled graph G with a suitable tree-decomposition is transformed to a labeled binary tree T(G) in time linear in the number of vertices of G and in such a way that P holds for G if and only if r(P) holds for T(G). This allows us, using techniques developed by Doner [20] and Thatcher and Wright [42], to compile a tree automaton which decides the MS-problem r(P) on the tree T(G) (and thus also P on the graph G) in linear time, and (ii) a procedure whereby such an automaton for a MS formula with free variables is modified to solve a related EMS problem involving counting