PRISTINA, Kosovo, Feb 10, (AP): Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s leftwing party won most seats in the weekend parliamentary election but was left without a majority in the house, forcing it to look for an ally to form the next government, according to preliminary results released Monday. The vote on Sunday was key in determining who will lead Kosovo as talks on normalizing ties with rival Serbia remain stalled and foreign funding for one of Europe’s poorest countries is in question.

The election marked the first time since independence in 2008 that Kosovo’s parliament completed a full four-year mandate. It was the ninth parliamentary vote in Kosovo since the end of the 1998-1999 war between Serbian government forces and ethnic Albanian separatists that pushed Serbian forces out following a 78-day NATO air campaign.

Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence. With 88% of the votes counted, Kurti’s Self-Determination Movement Party, or Vetevendosje!, had won 41.3%, according to the Central Election Commission, the election governing body. The Democratic Party of Kosovo, or PDK, whose main leaders are detained at a Netherlands-based international criminal tribunal in The Hague and accused of war crimes, won 21.8% of the vote.

Next, with 17.8% support is the Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK, the oldest party in the country. The LDK lost much of its support after the death in 2006 of its leader, Ibrahim Rugova. The Alliance for Kosovo’s Future of former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj garnered 7.7% of the votes. Still, Kurti was upbeat, though his remarks gave nothing away about who he plans to ask to join his coalition government.

"The people won. Vetevendosje! won. We are the winners who will form the next Cabinet,” Kurti told journalists as his supporters took to the streets to celebrate. The commission’s webpage was down temporarily on Sunday as it was overloaded "due to the citizens’ high interest to learn the results,” election body said. Results were collected manually. A preliminary turnout after 92% of the votes counted was 40.6% - about 7% lower than four years ago. The new 120-seat parliament reserves 20 seats for minorities regardless of election results, 10 of them for the Serb minority.