Serbia's Nikolic drops boycott threat

Authorities have dismissed an accusation by Tomislav Nikolic that the reformist Democratic Party of incumbent President Boris Tadic forged 500,000 votes to thwart a bid for power by Nikolic and his Serbian Progressive Party as unfounded. Nikolic, a former member of the ultranationalist Radical Party who has tried to rebrand himself as a pro-European conservative, said on Saturday he was considering pulling out of the run-off against Tadic for the presidency in protest. But on Sunday he said he would take part after all. “They [the Democratic Party] would declare victory anyway, whether we took part or not, and we'd be blamed for destabilizing Serbia at the most difficult moment,” Nikolic told reporters in the northern town of Kikinda, the state news agency Tanjug reported. The row over fraud and Nikolic's call for street protests still threaten to mar the vote. In Belgrade, dozens of cars carrying Nikolic supporters paraded through the capital. They carried banners reading “They stole my vote too!” Nikolic's party narrowly won the parliamentary election but looks set to be denied power by a renewed coalition between the second-placed Democratic Party and third-placed Socialists of late Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic, an uneasy alliance that would nevertheless keep the country edging towards membership of the European Union.