BELGRADE, Serbia-Serbia faced an uncertain political future Monday as nationalists and their pro-Western rivals scrambled to forge alliances that would let them take power after bitterly divisive weekend elections.

At stake was President Boris Tadic's drive to bring the impoverished Balkan country closer to membership in the European Union, and the international community's demand that Serbia bring fugitive war crimes suspects to justice.

"A new and in many ways uncertain phase in the country's political life has begun," said Braca Grubacic, a leading political analyst.

Sunday's vote left Serbia sharply split: Although Tadic's reformist Coalition for a European Serbia got the most votes, it was forced to seek support from minority parties to gain the parliamentary majority needed to form a government.

Meanwhile, far-rightist Tomislav Nikolic's Radical Party, which finished second, met Monday with nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's conservative coalition in an all-out bid to steer Serbia away from the EU and toward traditional ally Russia.

Both Nikolic and Tadic were courting the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist Party in hopes of piecing together at least 126 seats in the 250-seat parliament, the minimum needed to form a government.

Near-complete results released by the state electoral commission gave Tadic's bloc 102 seats and the Radicals 77.

Tadic was reaching out to the Liberal Party, which won 14, and to an ethnic Hungarian party that took four seats. If Tadic persuaded the Socialists to join him with their 20 seats, he would have a total of 140 seats.

But Nikolic was assured of the support of the 30 deputies loyal to Kostunica's coalition, and if he were to get the Socialist swing seats, his alliance would total 127 seats.

Tadic's Western allies wasted no time rallying around the Serbian president, hoping to give him a boost at home.

The EU, which signed a pre-entry aid-and-trade agreement with Serbia before the elections, called his coalition's success a "clear victory" by pro-European forces.

"We look forward to working with a new government formed on this mandate," said Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said pro-European parties won an "important moral victory," and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said "the majority of the Serbian people want to join Europe."

The U.S. Embassy in Belgrade echoed that sentiment, saying the Serbian electorate "has clearly demonstrated that its heart is in Europe."

"Serbia's citizens have spoken out in favor of a prosperous future inside the Western community," it said.

Tadic has pledged to try to capture indicted war crimes suspects including Gen. Ratko Mladic, sought by a U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for genocide in Bosnia during the 1992-95 war there. Nikolic, by contrast, has said he has no intention of pursuing suspects whom many Serbs revere as patriots and heroes.

The pro-Western coalition's surprisingly strong showing came just three months after protesters outraged by Kosovo's Feb. 17 declaration of independence set fire to part of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade.

That anger had stoked expectations of an electoral backlash and a Radical victory that would have trampled Serbia's efforts to prepare for eventual EU membership.

But analysts in Serbia said Monday that voters apparently were more concerned about lifting living standards than nursing bruised national pride over the loss of Kosovo.

"The success of the pro-European forces has shown that the wish for a better life has prevailed over the anger over the loss of territory," the conservative Politika daily wrote.

Milosevic was ousted by a pro-democracy movement in 2000. The former leader, who presided over the bloody 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia, died in March 2006 in a prison cell in The Hague, where the U.N. tribunal was trying him for atrocities in the Balkans.

Grubacic, the political analyst, said most Serbs appeared to be siding with the drive toward the EU even though nationalist and anti-Western sentiment abounds.

"Most voters obviously identify the promise of a better life with continuing down the road to the EU," he said.