Patstelling over Kosovo dreigt na winst nationalisten bij Servische verkiezingen (en)

Preliminary election results show the nationalist Serbian Radical Party took the most votes on Sunday but not enough to grab power, with pro-EU reformist parties already talking about a new coalition.

The pro-EU Democratic Party of president Boris Tadic got 22.7 percent, prime minister Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia took 16.3 percent and the radicals scooped 28.3 percent, according to the REC state election bureau.

The split could see Tadic and Kostunica team up with a smaller pro-EU party called G-17 to take 131 out of 250 seats in parliament while the radicals and ex-Milosevic socialists hold 97 seats, Balkans agency DTT-NET.COM reports.

Formal coalition talks will start after final election results come out on Wednesday (25 January), but Mr Tadic has already said he wants to join up with Mr Kostunica, as long as his Democratic Party gets to take over the prime minister post.

"Parties from the democratic side have won a two-thirds majority in parliament and this is an important signal to Europe," Mr Kostunica said. "The Democratic Party has taken a leadership position within the 'democratic bloc' and it will enter the negotiations with a demand for the prime minister's position."

"We are open [to coalition talks] and expect all parties to be responsible," Mr Kostunica stated. "What's most important is to have a consensus in the parliament...especially when the future status of Kosovo is in question."

Radical party deputy-leader Tomislav Nikolic - standing in for the leader, Vojislav Seslj, who is up to his neck in a war crimes trial in the Hague - accused Tadic and Kostunica of a "vicious campaign" and called for the current government to resign.

"The Serbian Radical Party is the winner but we will not have the opportunity to form a government," he said. "We need just a little more effort and we will accomplish this in the next elections."

EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday will discuss Serbia's EU integration future, with Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Slovenia and the Czech republic sympathetic to re-opening EU-association talks despite Belgrade's non-compliance with the UN war crimes tribunal.

But France and the Netherlands have in the past taken a harder line on the capture of war crimes suspects such as Ratko Mladic, while a UN proposal on the final status of Kosovo - due in late January or early February - could further complicate EU relations.

UN envoy Marti Ahtisaari is expected to suggest giving Kosovo "provisional independence" under EU rule leading to full sovereignty down the line.

Several EU states led by the UK and the US are keen for Kosovo to break away from Serbia, but Russia and Serbia are firmly opposed to the idea while EU members Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia also harbor doubts.

Tadic and Kostunica have promised voters they will hold on to the region, with Mr Tadic on Sunday saying "loud and clear, the answer is no" on Kosovo independence, AFP reports.

And Russian president Vladimir Putin told Germany's Angela Merkel in Sochi on Sunday "Russia thinks it is unacceptable to impose from outside a decision on the status of Kosovo" adding that any Kosovo solution would be "universal for similar cases" of separatist entities in Europe.

An impasse on Kosovo could provoke the Kosovo Albanian majority to declare independence unilaterally and spark clashes with ethnic Serbs, with NGO the International Crisis Group warning last December that "the risk of implosion becomes greater the deeper Kosovo goes into 2007 without its status settled."