http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/09/europe/serbia.php
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE (FRANCE) Kostunica warns of treason on eve of Serbian vote By Dan Bilefsky Friday, May 9, 2008 BELGRADE: As a rousing partisan battle song played and torches flared up across a giant stage, the nationalist prime minister of Serbia, Vojislav Kostunica, warned several thousand supporters this week they would be caving in to treason if they allowed a Serbia shorn of Kosovo to turn toward Europe and the West. "Where will we go as a nation if we don't defend Serbia as a state?" he asked the crowd, dressed in "Kosovo Is Serbia" T-shirts and gathered in Republic Square on Thursday night ahead of parliamentary elections here Sunday. "They are asking us to give up Kosovo," he said. "They are asking us to give up what we are. They say it is good for Serbia, but it is a lie. "It is treason. If we lose Kosovo, we can only be a caravan of gypsies and we are not a caravan of gypsies. We are a respected nation." Standing next to him, an emissary of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia told the crowd to stand up against the illegal occupation of Kosovo by the West with the same bravery Serbia and Russia had displayed against Hitler's Germany. "Better a grave than a slave," he said. The rally for Kostunica, 64, a brainy and unsmiling constitutional lawyer, underlined the stark choice Serbs face in elections that could draw Serbia closer to the European Union or drag it back into the isolation of the past. Kostunica is considered a key kingmaker in the elections since leading parties across the political spectrum may need his support to form a coalition government. While Kostunica helped to lead the revolution in 2000 that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic, he has since adopted Milosevic's nationalist rhetoric. He has railed against Western countries for recognizing Kosovo and has vowed that he will halt Serbian integration into the European Union unless Serbia's territorial sovereignty is respected. On Friday, he walked out of a government session discussing a pre-entry deal with the European Union, saying he would annul it if elected. Kostunica has tapped into deep and abiding resentment over Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in February with the backing of the EU and Washington. Serbs regard Kosovo as their historic heartland; some invoke the Jewish people's attachment to Israel to try to illustrate the extent of their emotional connection to this land. The latest polls show the far-right Radical Party, which ruled in coalition with Milosevic in the 1990s and backed his wars, with a slight edge over the party of President Boris Tadic, 50, a telegenic but understated psychologist, who advocates closer ties with the European Union and Washington. Kostunica's nationalist bloc is in third. Leading members of Kostunica's party said they were prepared to join forces with the Radical Party, which is led by Tomislav Nikolic, a former overseer of cemeteries who calls himself the "Undertaker." "We will line up with the party that has the same patriotism as we do and the same determination to hold on to Kosovo," said Velimir Ilic, a close ally of Kostunica's, who is minister of infrastructure in his cabinet. How Kostunica, once a liberal darling of the West, has transformed into a staunch pro-Russian nationalist has baffled many in Brussels, Washington and Serbia itself, where many pro-Western intellectuals say he has betrayed the values of the October 2000 revolt he helped engineer. But people close to Kostunica - who once invoked Charles de Gaulle's twin commitments to democracy and preserving the national interest at all costs as his political model - say he has always been a staunch nationalist determined to fend off Western interference in Serbia. For example, he opposed the extradition of Milosevic to The Hague to face war crimes charges. Even as a young law student in 1974, Kostunica was dismissed from Belgrade University's law faculty after lashing out at Tito's creation of a loose federal Yugoslav state he feared would undermine the rights of Serbs. Ljiljana Smajlovic, editor of Politika, a leading Serbian newspaper with close links to the government, said Kostunica, who once translated the Federalist Papers into Serbian, had a lawyerly mind and was determined not to cede any legal ground over Kosovo, whose independence he regarded as a reckless breach of international law. She said Kostunica, whom she has known for years, was a particularly infuriating interlocutor for the West because he was at once stubborn and possessed by a strong sense of moral high ground. "Like many former dissidents, he feels he is on the right side of history," she said. "He considers himself vindicated by the fall of communism and by his election against Milosevic. Now, he does not want to go down in history as the Serbian leader who allowed Kosovo to be lost. He cannot be intimidated or enticed." Others, however, are far less charitable and view Kostunica as a power-hungry ideologue who is exploiting the Kosovo issue to retain power, even if that means plunging Serbia into international isolation. "Kostunica is a European who doesn't want to go to Europe, a reformist who blocks reforms, the man who stands up for Kosovo, but who lost it," said Ivan Milosevic, a political analyst and marketing expert. "He was politically dead but has been revived because of Kosovo." A senior Western diplomat said the election would hinge on whether Serbs were prepared to allow their anger over Kosovo to trump their desire for a better life. Kosovo is among the poorest countries in Europe, with 21 percent unemployment and annual per capita income of about ?4,000, or $6,200. "Most people in this country care deeply about Kosovo. It is a button you can press," said the diplomat, who requested anonymity to avoid commenting publicly on another country's domestic affairs. "People are far more concerned about having better wages and health care, but Kostunica has harnessed emotions over Kosovo." __._,_.___
