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Polls: Serbia extremists lead democrats

BELGRADE, Serbia, April 20 (UPI) -- Serbia's ultra-nationalists and former communists could oust the ruling Democrats if elections were held this week, an opinion poll indicated Thursday.

In the polls the Serbian Radical party had 38 percent, followed by the Democratic Party of Serbia's President Boris Tadic with 28 percent.

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The Serbian Democratic Party of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and the Serbian Socialist Party, mostly former communists, tied for third with 7.6 percent each.

The Radical and Socialist parties, with a total of 45.6 percent support, would be able to form a coalition government and govern for four years, said officials of the Center for Free Election and Democracy, or CESID agency which sponsored the poll.

The two parties got Serbia into four ethnic wars -- against Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo -- when it was called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia -- between 1991 and 1995. The Serbs lost then all.

Vojislav Seselj, the leader of the Radicals, is currently awaiting trial on war crime charges at the U.N. tribunal in The Hague.

Slobodan Milosevic, who died of a heart attack last month while on trial in The Hague, was the leader of the Socialists.

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