Nationalists Win Power in Croatia

Ivo Sanader, prime minister-elect of Croatia, yesterday started putting together a coalition government after leading his nationalist centre-right party to victory in Sunday's general election.

It was a win that confirmed the return to power across former Yugoslavia of nationalists, some moderate, some extreme.

Mr Sanader leads the HDZ or Croatian Democratic Union, which ruled Croatia for a decade under an authoritarian president, the late Franjo Tudjman, bringing international isolation on the country because of bigotry, human rights abuses, ambitions to partition Bosnia, war crimes, corruption, and media repression.

In four years in opposition, Mr Sanader has expelled many of the party's traditional extreme wing and says he has forged a moderate, conservative party of the European mainstream, committed to bringing expelled Serbs home, cooperating with the Hague tribunal on war crimes, and leading Croatia into Nato and the European Union by 2007.

His foreign minister is likely to be Miomir Zuzul, a former Croatian ambassador to Washington who espouses moderate views.

Mr Sanader's ousting of the Social Democratic party's centre-left coalition, however, was ascribed to frustration with economic hardship rather than resurgent nationalism or nostalgia for the Tudjman regime.

Internationally, Mr Sanader will enjoy the benefit of the doubt and be judged on whether he comes good on his pledges. Croatia's chances of a fast-track bid to join the EU, a policy that enjoys cross-party support and a sweeping popular consensus, will hinge on whether he really has transformed the HDZ.

His centre-right coalition looks likely to muster a parliamentary majority of at least 10, with his three-party coalition taking 75 seats out of 140.

But he may well extend that majority by coaxing the conservative Peasants' party, a partner in the outgoing government, into his team.

The Peasants' party is a natural partner for a centre-right coalition and would help cement Mr Sanader's reputation for moderation.

Those credentials, however, will not be helped by the likely inclusion of the extremist HSP as a junior partner in the new coalition, a neo-fascist grouping which fielded a black-shirted militia in the war in the 1990s and is now trying to distance itself from its longheld devotion to the fascist Ustashe regime that ruled Croatia during the second world war.