Campaigners vie for last word days before polls

Serbian parties making final efforts to garner votes ahead of Sunday

A NATO KFOR soldier walks past an election poster for Vojislav Seselj reading ‘Go forward Serbia!’ in Gracanica, yesterday. Kosovo’s Serbs will also be voting in the elections on Sunday.

BELGRADE (AFP) – Serbia’s rival nationalists and pro-Europeans yesterday waged a last-ditch battle for votes ahead of weekend elections that give hardliners their best shot at power since Slobodan Milosevic’s ouster.

The ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) are the front-runners heading into Sunday’s general elections – considered a referendum on European Union integration – thanks to the trauma of Kosovo’s independence.

With 34 percent of voter support in the latest survey, the SRS are tipped to form a nationalist government with the party of outgoing Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and Socialists of late President Milosevic.

Trailing them by 1 percentage point are a pro-European camp spearheaded by President Boris Tadic’s Democratic Party (DS), which is expected to struggle to find suitable coalition allies.

The May 11 elections were called after Kostunica clashed with his former coalition partners – the DS and reformist G17-Plus party – over ties with the European Union after most of the 27-nation bloc recognized Kosovo.

Tomislav Nikolic, the acting Radicals leader, said he was confident his party would link up with Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS). “The DSS and SRS will create a government very soon,” Nikolic said in an interview with the tabloid Press.

“I expect to begin negotiations with Kostunica on a new coalition as early as May 12... and put into effect a program which has already become our joint ideology,” said Nikolic, whose party chief Vojislav Seselj is being tried at the UN war crimes tribunal.

In a sign of the spiteful campaign, posters appeared in downtown Belgrade bearing old pictures of a pistol-toting Seselj next to Kostunica, and stamped with the word “COALITION.” The DSS has yet to rule out such a union, which together with the Socialists could give the nationalist bloc a majority of up to 15 deputies in the 250-seat parliament, according to surveys.

Analyst Goran Svilanovic said Kostunica’s goal was to shift power to the nationalists, including his DSS, as a form of “revenge” against the European Union.

“He’s frustrated with the breakup of Serbia and Montenegro and the loss of Kosovo – and blames the European Union for both,” Svilanovic, a former Serbian foreign minister, told the euractiv.com Internet media portal.

PRISTINA (AP) – Kosovo is once again caught in the middle.

Europe’s newest country enraged Serbia by declaring independence in February, and that has driven many Serbs to support ultranationalists in Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Now, Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority and its Serbian minority alike fear the fledgling state may be in for trouble if the Serbian Radical Party wins the vote.

“In these elections, I’m expecting that hopefully the democratic side of Serbia will win. But if the Radicals win, I’m really expecting a destabilization and problems here,” said Dejan Gvozdic, a Kosovo Serb living in the ethnically tense northern town of Mitrovica.

Kosovo remains deeply divided along ethnic lines. Ethnic Albanians account for 90 percent of Kosovo’s 2 million people, but the restive Serbian minority – like the Serbian government itself – refuses to acknowledge independence.

Western officials also fear an ultranationalist victory in the Serbian elections could plunge the region back into isolation and spark new violence in Kosovo.

The situation is complicated in Kosovo because its Serbs will hold parallel local elections on Sunday. UN authorities contend the local poll is illegal, and Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership sees it as a provocation – an effort by Serbs to undermine the sovereignty of their state.

Tensions are so high that in anticipation of possible violence, and to preserve Kosovo’s fragile borders, NATO will send an additional 600 British peacekeepers to boost its 16,000-strong force already on the ground. The extra forces are to ensure a peaceful transition of authority from the UN administration to Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian-dominated institutions in mid-June.