Kosovo's nationalists have dominated snap parliamentary polls but they face a nearly impossible task of building a government amid mutual animosities.
The coalition led by President Hashim Thaci's Democratic Party (PDK) won 34.7 per cent of the vote, election authorities said after counting 91 per cent of the ballots cast in Sunday's election.
The hardline PDK group is expected on Monday to nominate former premier and rebel commander Ramush Haradinaj, the leader of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK), as the new prime minister.
But Haradinaj will need an ally, and neither of the other two big political groups seem likely to back him.
The Vetevendosje party won 26.7 per cent, ahead of the bloc of outgoing Prime Minister Isa Mustafa's Democratic League (LDK) with 25.8 per cent.
Vetevendosje is the most radical Kosovo party and is at war with the PDK and LDK, opposing every motion they put forward over the past three years. It has launched protests and tear gas attacks inside parliament and accuses rivals of corruption.
It also appears improbable that the LDK will rejoin Thaci after his PDK toppled Mustafa in April by pulling out of a coalition and forcing elections a year early.
Wrangling for a coalition also followed the 2014 polls. Then it produced the unpopular grand coalition of PDK and LDK.
The government failed to make headway on long-standing problems facing Kosovo - which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 - including corruption, crime, a moribund economy and poverty.
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