Nationalists are pitted against pro-Western moderates in the polls [AFP]

Sunday's vote, seen as the most important general election since the fall of former president Slobodan Milosevic, is the country's 10th nationwide ballot in eight years.
 
More than 8,600 polling stations opened at 7am [0500 GMT] and will close 13 hours later. Nearly 300 polling stations have been set up in Kosovo, an ethnic Albanian-majority province that broke away from Serbia almost three months ago.
 
The first preliminary results are expected at about 2000 GMT.
 
At least 6.7 million people are eligible to vote, including more than 115,000 ethnic Serbs scattered across Kosovo.

Contenders

Vojislav Seselj, the Radicals' formal leader, is an old Milosevic ally who is being tried for war crimes before the UN's international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.

Tomislav Nikolic, the party's acting leader, hopes to join forces with Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia which has yet to rule out such an option.
 
Running on the ticket "For a European Serbia", Boris Tadic, the Serbian president and leader of his pro-Western Democratic Party, runs a close race with the nationalist Radical Party.
 
Each camp is expected to pick up at least one-third of the vote.
 
Tight race

Given the close nature of the race, the two main blocs, the pro-Europeans and nationalists, will need to produce a coalition with at least one other smaller party.

Analysts have been busy predicting possible coalitions, mostly coupling the Radicals with Kostunica's nationalists, or Tadic's Democrats with those representing minorities.

The creation of a nationalist government is certain to end Belgrade's co-operation with the ICTY, thus halting its integration with the European Union and pushing it back into the isolation of the 1990s Milosevic regime.

In a move meant to woo voters disillusioned with the West, the EU signed last week a pre-membership pact with Serbia.

However, this only added to a campaign that was marred by death threats against Tadic.

Kosovo status

The parliamentary and local polls will be held in Kosovo despite opposition from the UN and Kosovo's ethnic Albanians about the local elections, which they see as an attempt by Serbia to partition the breakaway territory.

Some 40 nations including the US and all but a handful from the EU have recognised Kosovo since its ethnic Albanian-dominated parliament unilaterally declared independence on February 17.

The loss of the southern territory, viewed by most Serbs as the cradle of their history, culture and Orthodox Christian religion, has buoyed support for the nationalists in the run-up to the elections.

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