Serbia and Bosnia. New faces, old faces

A new man in Serbia's politics, and old ones in Bosnia

BOGOLJUB KARIC is one of Serbia's best-known businessmen, whose interests include the country's biggest mobile-phone network. Now, like another famous businessman whom he sometimes apes, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, he has emerged at the centre of Serbian politics. On June 13th Serbs voted for president, a not particularly powerful job but one whose incumbent can set the course of Serbian politics. The top two candidates go to a run-off on June 27th, which will feature, in the extreme-nationalist corner, Tomislav Nikolic, and in the pro-reform, pro-Europe corner, Boris Tadic, a former defence minister.

If Mr Nikolic becomes president, Serbia will drift back into isolation. If Mr Tadic does, Serbia has a chance of getting its reforms back on track. Mr Nikolic took 30% of the vote and Mr Tadic more than 27%. Both are now racing to attract the 18% who voted for the third-placed candidate: Mr Karic. The candidate backed by Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia's prime minister, got only 13%.

According to Srdjan Bogosavljevic, head of Strategic Marketing, a polling organisation, the run-off candidates are neck and neck. Mr Karic is trying to cut a deal with Mr Tadic, promising his support but saying he wants to be prime minister if the government collapses and new elections are held. In fact, Mr Karic may not be able to deliver his voters; but he has other powerful assets. He can exert influence through his media interests; he can slap up posters on billboards booked for mobile-phone advertising. And he is building a new party, whose name translates (in Italian) as: Forza Serbia.

Meanwhile Serbs in Bosnia are also wondering if the days to come will seal their fate. On June 11th a commission of the government of the Republika Srpska, the Serbian part of Bosnia, finally admitted that Serbian forces were responsible for the massacre of up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. The commission did this partly because Paddy Ashdown, the international proconsul of Bosnia, had signalled that he would sack the Bosnian Serb leaders if they failed to acknowledge the truth that everyone else already knows.

But the consequences may be momentous. If there are guilty men, logically there should be arrests. The Hague war-crimes tribunal has indicted Radovan Karadzic, former Bosnian Serb leader, over Srebrenica, with his former military commander, Ratko Mladic. Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the tribunal, expects Mr Karadzic to be in custody by the end of June. If that is done, Bosnia might be admitted to the Partnership for Peace, NATO's waiting-room, perhaps even at NATO's Istanbul summit on June 28th-29th. Serbia is also concerned with Mr Mladic, as he is thought to be hiding there.