Serb extremist forms pro-EU party

SERBIA:FORMER SERB ultra-nationalist leader Tomislav Nikolic, one of the fiercest critics of western support for Kosovo's independence, has stunned compatriots and erstwhile enemies alike in Brussels by forming a new, EU-friendly party.

As the firebrand chief of the Radical Party, Mr Nikolic acquired a reputation as the implacable voice of Serb nationalism when he urged Belgrade's leaders to sever all ties with the EU until it condemned Kosovo's declaration of sovereignty in February.

Having slightly softened his rhetoric in a bid to woo moderate voters in May's general election however, Mr Nikolic enraged his most hardline supporters last month by saying that the government should in fact sign a pre-accession deal with the EU.

That declaration split the Radicals, with party founder Vojislav Seselj - who is on trial for war crimes at the UN court in The Hague - denouncing Mr Nikolic as a "western stooge" who wanted to destroy Serbia at the behest of foreign powers.

Mr Nikolic then quit the Radicals and took many of his allies to the new Serbian Progressive Party, which held its first major meeting in Belgrade this week.

"Our programme is a simple, ordinary people's one - to change Serbia, to improve living standards," Mr Nikolic told about 3,000 supporters. "We want to be the best allies of Russia and the most devoted members of the European Union." Mr Nikolic (56), who helped the Radicals become the single largest party in the Serb parliament, said his new bloc wanted to balance the country's foreign policy between east and west, and would be a democratic force "of the modern political right".

Opinion polls suggest Mr Nikolic has taken some two-thirds of Radical supporters with him to his new party, and that it would win about 20 per cent of the vote in an election.

Waning nationalism in Serbia could influence neighbouring Bosnia, where threats by Serb politicians to seek independence have angered Muslim leaders, who want to weaken the country's ethnically based regions and strengthen the central government in Sarajevo.

Paddy Ashdown, the British former chief administrator of Bosnia, and Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy who shaped the country's 1995 peace deal, warned yesterday that "resolve and transatlantic unity are needed if we are not to sleepwalk into another crisis." "It's time to pay attention to Bosnia again, if we don't want things to get very nasty quickly," they wrote in a joint article.