SERBIA: Serbia's reformist parties were under strong international pressure yesterday to bury their rivalries and agree on a new coalition to try to banish the threat from extremists who emerged strongest from the general election.
Stunned by the triumph of the extremist Serbian Radical party led by the war crimes indictee Mr Vojislav Seselj in Sunday's election, Mr Vojislav Kostunica, the former Yugoslav president whose party came second, faced the need to rebuild bridges with his democratic rivals to head a coalition and become prime minister.
Mr Kostunica did not help matters by denouncing the outgoing reformist Democratic Party government and blaming its record for the extremists' gains. Without the Democratic Party in a coalition, Mr Kostunica's party, which won 53 seats, cannot muster a majority.
Mr Boris Tadic, the outgoing defence minister and leader of the Democratic Party, which took 37 seats, offered an olive branch to Mr Kostunica. "It is important that democratic groups now form a bloc that will ensure that Serbia remains on the path of democratic reforms," he said.
With the G17 Plus group winning 34 seats, the three main reformist parties that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic three years ago took 42 per cent of the vote and a total of 124 seats, but remain two short of a majority.
While the extremist Radicals, who ran a militia engaged in ethnic cleansing during the 1990s, took 81 of the 250 seats, they too look unable to build a governing majority, despite Mr Milosevic's Socialists, a likely partner, winning 22.
The fifth-placed monarchist Serbian Renewal Movement of Vuk Draskovic took 23 seats and its expected participation in a Kostunica-led coalition would ensure a majority.
For that to work, Mr Kostunica still needs to work with the Democratic Party of Mr Tadic. They broke amid bitter recrimination last year and during the campaign Mr Kostunica ruled out a coalition with the Democratic Party.
The complicated electoral arithmetic portended a protracted period of horsetrading likely to reinforce the popular perception that the reformers are corrupt, preoccupied with their personal positions, and incapable of ruling effectively.
It was such perceptions after two years of bickering that helped the extreme nationalists to Sunday's triumph.
That shock sent a chastening signal to the US and EU, which have invested heavily in the reformers in an attempt to erase extreme Serbian nationalism.
Mr Seselj's Radicals tapped into widespread disappointment with Western-oriented economic and political reforms, as well as bickering and corruption among politicians during the three years of reformist rule since Mr Milosevic was ousted.
Mr Milosevic headed the Socialists' candidate list, although, like Mr Seselj, he is in UN custody over his role in the wars of the 1990s and could not take up a seat unless freed.
Mr Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief who has made the Balkans one of his foreign policy priorities and may now be pondering where he has gone wrong, urged Mr Kostunica and his rivals to bridge their differences.
"I appeal to all democratic forces to work together to ensure that a new government based on a clear and strong European reform agenda can be formed rapidly," Mr Solana said. Brussels would lend its "full support to such a government".
Analysts expect the international pressure to result in a Kostunica-led coalition, but they rate its chances of lasting long as not very high.