Going To Extremes?

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In many parts of the world, being indicted for war crimes might be seen as a political liability. Not in Serbia. In parliamentary elections scheduled for later this month — the first since Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist Party was thrown out of power in 2000 — no fewer than three of the political parties are headed by men who have been charged with war crimes.

Even stranger: one of them may be leading the pack. The Serbian Radical Party, led by ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj — who has been awaiting trial on charges of murder, ethnic cleansing and other crimes against humanity in a Hague court since earlier this year — scored 22-25% in the latest polls. The party is calling for an end to Western-style reforms and the return of Serbian troops to Kosovo.

Seselj is in good company: his prison mate in the Hague, Milosevic, was recently heard on Serbian radio exhorting the faithful to vote for him on behalf of the "martyrs" of Kosovo. Such displays leave some Serbs wondering whether their country's three-year experiment with Western-style democracy is coming to an end. "Serbs are mad as hell and the Radicals, especially, are positioning themselves to get that protest vote," said Miodrag Popovic, an Apple computer salesman in Belgrade. "I am definitely worried."

Should he be? Even if the Radical Party wins more votes than the competition on Dec. 28, analysts say it won't get the majority needed to form a government — and finding a coalition partner will likely prove impossible. "It would be the kiss of death," said one Western diplomat in Belgrade. Instead, the Radical Party's main rival, the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS ), led by ex-President Vojislav Kostunica, seems more likely to forge a coalition with smaller parties.

Kostunica, though a lifelong opponent of Milosevic, has a nationalist streak of his own. He took DSS out of the current government in 2001 and has spent much of the last three years complaining about anti-Serb bias in the West. A parliament in which his party and the Radicals hold the largest number of seats will almost certainly sour the country's relations with its neighbors, the European Union and Washington at a time when the aid-dependent, recession-prone economy can least afford it.

The country's sense of outrage climaxed in March when its leader, Zoran Djindjic, was assassinated by gangsters on a Belgrade street. His government reacted by launching a massive crackdown on organized crime that will culminate this month in the biggest trial in Serbian history, but no one has managed to replace Djindjic's energy and political will. The International Criminal Tribunal, for its part, further stoked Serbs' sense of embitterment by issuing a steady stream of indictments against government officials.