ZAGREB (AFP) – An ethnic Serb is to run in Croatia’s presidential polls due early next year for the first time since the 1991-95 Serbo-Croatian war, his party said yesterday.

Veljko Dzakula is to run as the candidate of three ethnic Serb parties, the Democratic Party of Serbs said in a statement.

“With the candidacy of Veljko Dzakula... the three parties want to send a clear message that the Serb ethnic community is trying to achieve integration into the Croatian state and society,” it said.

Dzakula, 54, enters the campaign in order to “advocate on the state level the values of integration... as well as prevention of discrimination and thus help democratic consolidation of our society.” Dzakula, head of the Serb Democratic Forum NGO that deals with ethnic Serbs’ rights, is to reveal further details on his candidacy tomorrow.

Croatia’s proclamation of independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991 triggered the four-year war against rebel Serbs who opposed the move.

Dzakula’s wartime role remains controversial as he was a top official of a rebel-held region, but was also involved in talks with Croatian authorities to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Some 280,000 ethnic Serbs fled Croatia during and after the war, mostly to neighboring Serbia and Bosnia, United Nations figures show. So far about 130,000 of them have returned.

The Serbs are Croatia’s largest minority, accounting for 4.5 percent of the total population of 4.4 million.

Their return and integration is one of the key issues in Croatia’s bid to join the European Union, which Zagreb hopes will take place in 2011.

Croatians will vote in early 2010 to elect a successor to President Stipe Mesic, who has held the post since 2000.