Figure With Ties to Milosevic Is Set to Become Serbia’s Premier

The wartime spokesman for Slobodan Milosevic’s party will be sworn in as prime minister of Serbia on Thursday, officials said, stoking international concerns that Serbia will abandon its European path and return to the nationalism of the past.
.....
Although Mr. Dacic and Mr. Nikolic say they have left nationalism behind and have embraced the European Union, the new coalition government will need to convince skeptics that it does not intend to forsake the West for closer ties with Moscow. Mr. Nikolic once said that Serbia would be better off as a province of Russia than as a member of the European Union.

Like much of Europe, Serbia faces economic challenges, including 25 percent unemployment, rising inflation, a weak currency and woefully low incomes for workers. A headline published online last week by B92, a Serbian broadcaster, lamented that “10,000 Serbian Children Eat Only One Meal Per Day.”

While top economic posts in the new government are to be held by supporters of free-market economics, some voices in the coalition have been calling for radical steps like breaking with the International Monetary Fund, which froze a $1.2 billion precautionary loan to Serbia in February over concerns about overspending and spiraling public debt. Rather than adopt harsh austerity, some analysts say, the new government may seek a loan from Russia.
.....
Serbia has refused to recognize the independence of Kosovo, a former Serbian province that broke away in 2008, taking with it territory that Serbia cherishes as its medieval heartland, though it is now populated largely by ethnic Albanians. Mr. Dacic gave signs in Berlin recently that he was open to improving ties with Kosovo, but he has also discussed a partitioning of the new country as a possible solution to tensions there.