Serbia's crucial parliamentary elections ended on Sunday night after 13 hours of voting. The nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) led all other parties or coalitions with a high voter turnout.

Based on 15.5 percent of total votes cast in the parliamentary elections, RIK announced that the SRS had won 27.06 percent of votes to remain the single strongest party in the 250-seat parliament, but without a government-forming majority.

According to the RIK, Serbian President Boris Tadic's pro-Western Democratic Party (DS) won 22.59 percent, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia-New Serbia coalition (DSS-NS) 16.5 percent, the G17 Plus 7.12 percent, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) 6.1 percent and the coalition led by the Liberal Democratic Party 5.47 percent.

The election monitoring agency Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CESID) also published its preliminary results based on 80 percent of the processed sample.

According to the CESID results translating into the number of seats, the SRS will have 81 seats, DS 65 seats, DSS-NS coalition 48 seats, G17 Plus 19 seats, SPS 16 seats, the LDP-led coalition 14 seats, Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians three seats, the List for Sandzak coalition two seats and the Serbian Union of Roma and Romany Party one seat each.

CESID Executive Director Zoran Lucic said that the future government would possess strong legitimacy due to the high 60-percent turnout.

The Republic Electoral Commission is obligated to publish the final, official results of the parliamentary elections by Jan. 25, after which the new parliament will be formed in a month.

The elections came five days before UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari is set to submit a proposal on the future status of Kosovo, an issue that will remain as the main challenge for the future government.

Most Serbs remain strongly opposed to losing the province, while ethnic Albanians, accounting for some 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million citizens, have been demanding independence.

(Xinhua News Agency January 22, 2007)