BELGRADE: Serbian President-elect Tomislav Nikolic, faced the challenge yesterday of proving he has swung behind the country's pro-Western course, after a shock victory that rattled the region.
The election of Nikolic, a former ultranationalist ally of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic who says he now supports Serbia's goal of joining the European Union, plunged the country into political uncertainty.
Nikolic beat liberal Boris Tadic in a close-run vote in which less than half the electorate turned out, breaking the almost 12-year hold on power of the reformists who ousted Milosevic in 2000.
The result throws into doubt a deal on a ruling coalition headed by Tadic's Democratic Party and will cause unease among Serbia's neighbours, for whom rightist Nikolic is closely associated with the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia.
The EU, weighing up his professed conversion to the goal of accession, congratulated Nikolic on his victory and urged him to support the next Serbian government in pursuing talks on joining the bloc that could start next year.
"Serbia's European perspective is very concrete and we therefore hope to be able to rely on President Nikolic's personal dedication to achieve this aim," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Council President Herman Van Rompuy said in a joint statement.
Calling for "statesmanship", they stressed the need to continue the process of reconciliation in the region after a decade of war in which more than 125,000 people died, and to improve relations with Kosovo, a former province of Serbia that is now an independent state.
In Serbia, the prime minister is more powerful than the president, but the head of state can hold up legislation.
Nikolic, 60, was in government with Milosevic in 1999 when Serbian forces expelled almost 1 million ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and NATO intervened with air strikes.
Tracking the Balkan country's gradual progress from pariah state to EU membership candidate in March, he has tried to reinvent himself as a pro-European conservative since splitting in 2008 from his firebrand mentor Vojislav Seselj, now on trial for war crimes in The Hague.
Serbia’s new president pledges to stay Europe course
