Pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic becomes the winner of Serbia's presidential election, edging an ultranationalist ally of former president Slobodan Milosevic by a narrow margin.
The state electoral commission and independent vote monitors said on Sunday that Tadic won about 51 per cent, while extreme nationalist Tomislav Nikolic had 47 per cent in the closely contested race.
The remaining ballots were invalid.
"Serbia has shown its great democratic potential," Tadic said in his victory speech, praising Nikolic for "the number of votes he has won."
Nikolic, the pro-Russian challenger, said, "I congratulate him (Tadic) on his victory. ... I will continue to be his tough opposition."
Tadic's supporters, waving Serbian, EU and Democratic Party flags and honking car horns, celebrated his victory in downtown Belgrade.
Tadic's Democratic Party played a key role in the ouster of Milosevic from power in 2000.
The soft-spoken party leader first became the president in 2004, by beating Nikolic in another runoff election.
Nikolic, deputy leader of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, served as a deputy prime minister during Milosevic's 1998-99 war in Kosovo, when NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days to stop his brutal crackdown against the province's separatists.
The province has been run by the United Nations and NATO since the war.
Kosovo's Albanian leaders said they would declare independence days after the Serbian runoff, no matter who wins, and they expect the US and most EU countries to follow up with quick recognition.
Source: DDNEWS
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