Pro-Western Boris Tadic headed for a second term as Serbia's president on Sunday, initial results showed, sparking wild celebrations in Belgrade despite fears over Kosovo's looming independence.
Tadic, who campaigned on European Union-backed prosperity, had 51.1 percent of the vote against 47.2 percent for Tomislav Nikolic, an ultra-nationalist who favours greater links to Russia, said the electoral commission.
Nikolic, defeated by Tadic in 2004, acknowledged he had probably lost again and jubilant Tadic supporters poured onto the streets of the capital, sounding car horns and waving blue and yellow Democratic Party flags as they converged on the downtown area.
Fireworks erupted before Tadic appeared at a window overlooking Belgrade's main avenue Terazije to a cacophony of noise from hundreds of cheering supporters.
"This is Serbia's victory. I think we have proven both to Europe and everywhere else in the world what kind of democracy we have in Serbia," Tadic told them.
"We give support today to our fellow people in Kosovo and show them that we will never let them down," he said.
"We don't want bad things to come to anyone. We want peace, cooperation with all countries in the region, but we demand Serbia be respected, for everyone to respect Serbian people and all the people living in Serbia."
The threat by majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo to make a unilateral declaration of independence within days of the election has been opposed by both candidates and worried voters.
The Kosovo issue and the fact the two presidential candidates had promised to take the country in very different directions led to the highest turnout since late strongman Slobodan Milosevic was defeated in elections in 2000.
The CeSID non-governmental monitoring group predicted a victory for Tadic by 50.5 percent to 47.9 percent and said 67.7 percent of eligible Serbians had turned out to vote.
Experts had expected a far tighter runoff after Nikolic came out in front with 40 percent to Tadic's 35 in January 20's first round.
But Tadic had appealed to young voters to turn out in force, promising them a brighter future if Serbia can strengthen links with and eventually join the European Union.
The result is expected to have a bearing on the shaky coalition government made up of Tadic's Democrats and the party of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.
Kostunica had refused to back Tadic because the president would not take a tougher line against EU support for an independent Kosovo.
Nikolic, a 55-year-old former undertaker, sought votes from Kostunica's camp, as well as losers of Serbia's delayed transition from years of economic mismanagement under communism and the Milosevic regime.
"We will be a strong opposition both to the authorities and the president," he told his Radical Party supporters after admitting that Tadic had almost certainly won.
Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj is being tried for war crimes at the UN tribunal at The Hague.
Belgrade's European integration has been drawn out by its failure to hand over war crimes fugitives like Bosnian genocide suspect Ratko Mladic, and further complicated by EU support for Kosovo independence.
In Belgrade, a war-weary city so often at the crossroads of the region's turbulent history, voters said they were torn between a future in the EU and losing Kosovo.
Kosovo Serbs also voted, some in the hope that their choice will help keep the province in Serbia, others resigned to splitting from their motherland.
In the lead-up to the election, NATO and the United Nations bolstered troops and international police in Kosovo.
The UN has run Kosovo since NATO's 1999 air war drove out Serb forces waging a crackdown on separatist Albanians who comprise about 90 percent of the province's two million population.
Most Serbs consider the tiny territory the cradle of their history, culture and Orthodox Christianity.
The United States and most EU members are ready to recognise Kosovo's statehood, fuelling a nationalist backlash and buoying support for Nikolic.
