BELGRADE: Serbia’s hardliners, marginalised after May elections, are trying to stir pent up nationalism against a West-leaning government after Radovan Karadzic’s arrest, analysts said on Saturday.

Nationalist parties have raised the political stakes ahead of the expected transfer to a UN tribunal next week of the captured Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect, whom some Serbs still consider a hero.

The ultra-nationalist Radical Party hinted on Friday that pro-western President Boris Tadic who it accuses of treachery for ordering Karadzic’s arrest could meet the same fate as assassinated Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic.

“We point out to Tadic that treason is never forgiven in Serbia,” Vjerica Radeta, a Radical Party deputy, told a press conference.

“We are not threatening (him), but we are warning of the curse which followed all the traitors in Serbian history,” she said, citing the 2003 murder of the reformist Djindjic.

Such rhetoric was common before the assassination of Djindjic, seen as the man behind the 2001 handover to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of autocratic Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.

Milosevic died in his ICTY cell in The Hague in March 2006 before his trial for genocide and war crimes was completed.

Radeta’s comments were condemned by Tadic’s Democratic Party, which urged authorities to “to prevent any further escalation of hate speech and violence”. They came with the Radicals pressing ahead with their plans to stage a massive protest rally against the new government in Belgrade on Tuesday.

Even before Karadzic’s arrest, the Radicals and the party of former nationalist prime minister Vojislav Kostunica had blocked the work of the parliament.

On the day of his capture, the new government called a two-week pause of parliament because the filibuster was preventing the ratification of a rapprochement accord with the European Union and energy deal with Russia.

In an interview published by the news agency Beta on Saturday, Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic expressed disappointment with the opposition.

“The speed of Serbia’s EU integration depends on the effectiveness of the work of the parliament,” said Cvetkovic, who lamented the opposition’s “irresponsible” obstruction of the assembly.

Political analyst Dusan Janjic said the opposition was using Karadzic’s arrest as an occasion to destabilise the new government, a coalition including Milosevic’s reformed Socialists which was sworn in on July 7.

“The opposition is obviously marginalised and is trying to impose some kind of ... fear,” said Janjic, the director of the non-governmental Forum for Ethnic Relations. “They are counting on the passive attitude of the ruling majority, notably the Socialists, to prolong this story as long as possible and to be on the streets in order to get the public’s attention,” he said.

Hundreds of ultra-nationalists have already marched on Belgrade’s avenues each day since the Karadzic arrest, some of them venting their fury by attacking journalists.

Another analyst indicated the opposition was taking advantage of Serb anger with the ICTY’s recent decisions to acquit former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj and Bosnian Muslim military commander Naser Oric.

“It’s a convenient moment for them because a small percentage (of citizens) believe that The Hague tribunal can achieve justice,” Slobodan Reljic, the editor-in-chief of the newsweekly NIN, said.

The public’s “confidence was decreasing with The Hague tribunal and relations with the West as someone who promises a lot but doesn’t offer anything,” said Reljic.

—AFP