Serbia's President Boris Tadic called an early parliamentary election for January 21st today.
The election date may influence the timing of a decision on the fate of Serbia's breakaway Kosovo province.
The big powers guiding Balkan diplomacy - the United States, Britain, Italy, France, Germany and Russia - meet in Vienna today to consider the next move on Kosovo.
Seen as sympathetic to the ethnic Albanian majority's demand for independence, they have hinted they would wait until after Serbian elections, if held in December, to avoid driving voters into the arms of ultranationalists.