Taboos are falling fast in Serbia.

It has opened talks with Kosovo, the cherished breakaway province Serbs considers the cradle of their culture. It has stepped up efforts to capture Ratko Mladic, the war crimes suspect many here idolize as a hero. And it has apologized for atrocities committed during Yugoslavia’s violent breakup.

Suddenly, the once fiercely nationalistic country is focused less on pride than on its deep economic problems, and that means turning away from traditional mentor Russia and building bridges with Europe and the United States.

The prize of EU membership is at the root of the transformation: Serbia has come under a growing realization that the path to prosperity is through reforms that will allow it to join the continent’s club of responsible Western democracies.

It was just a few years ago that Serbian nationalists, angered at Kosovo’s independence, attacked the U.S. and other Western embassies. Serbia’s leaders scoffed at the idea of joining the European Union and instead courted Russia, the country’s traditional ally.

Now, under reformist President Boris Tadic, Serbia is striving hard to leave behind the stigma of being cast as the key fomenter of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

It has reached out to the West in other ways as well. At a recent gay pride parade, police protected marchers from rampaging thugs, a decision that until recently would have been unthinkable in this deeply homophobic country.

The shift is already bearing fruit.

The EU agreed last month to review in detail Serbia’s long-standing request to join the 27-nation bloc, even while conditioning entry to how serious the country is in pursuing Mladic, the wartime Bosnian Serb army commander charged with genocide by a U.N. war crimes tribunal. Mladic is accused of orchestrating the massacre at Srebrenica, the slaughter of some 8,000 Bosnian men and boys in Europe’s worst carnage since World War II.

Change was slow in coming, nearly two decades after the end of communist rule and Serbia’s central role in the bloodshed unleashed by the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Under the slogan of national pride, late strongman Slobodan Milosevic stirred up losing wars in Croatia, Bosnia and finally Kosovo, redrawing the map of Europe and leaving much of the region mired in ethnic distrust.

If Serbia continues on its new path, it will follow in the footsteps of other ex-communist countries, including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. Today, all are members of the EU and NATO, and count themselves American allies.

The pro-Western Tadic believes Serbia, surrounded by countries that are EU and NATO members, or aspire to that status, has no alternative but to join the Europe of common democratic values.

He believes Serbia can prosper economically only if it joins the bloc.

“People in the European Union live better, they have a better economy, they have better implementation of laws and that’s why we have to go that way,” said Tadic, who began his second five-year term in 2008.

Not all Serbs are eager to leave the past behind. Tadic’s new pro-Western drive faces strong opposition from nationalists who would rather see Serbia in close alliance with Russia. Moscow strongly opposed the 1999 NATO air strikes against Serbia and supports Belgrade in not recognizing Kosovo’s independence.

Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, Serbia’s first pro-Western leader after Yugoslavia’s breakup, was assassinated in 2003 by Serb paramilitaries who fought the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and who feared he would hand them over to a U.N. war crimes tribunal.

Djindjic’s murder marked the return of nationalists to power. Angered at the United States and most EU countries for their recognition of Kosovo’s independence, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica moved to abandon his predecessor’s strivings to join the EU and instead worked on even closer ties with Moscow.

Moscow has taken a special interest in Belgrade’s fortunes. Russia shares cultural, ethnic and religious roots with Slavic, Orthodox Christian Serbia. NATO’s bombing of Serbia over Kosovo became a new symbol of the evaporation of Russian influence in the decade after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the independence of its former East European satellites.

The U.S., meanwhile, considers Serbia’s direction significant as a potential source of instability in a traditionally volatile region.

For Moscow, the U.S. focus on Belgrade is unnerving.

Analysts say the Kremlin was unhappy when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton last month said Washington wanted Serbia to become the region’s “leader” and a EU member.

The perception in Russia is that “Belgrade is an ally of Moscow,” Elena Guskova, and influential Balkan analyst in Moscow. “If Serbia joins the EU, the situation will change drastically.”

Tadic’s government was itself born of the political instability and violence of the 2008 embassy attacks.

Kostunica’s coalition government with Tadic’s Democratic Party collapsed only a few months later, triggering early elections. After decades of frustration with nationalists, Tadic’s pro-Western bloc won the vote on a promise to bring the impoverished nation closer to mainstream Europe.

But persistent economic hardship has tarnished Tadic.

Serbs are increasingly frustrated over double-digit unemployment and an average monthly wage that hovers around euro300 ($400) a month, the lowest in the Balkans.

“What is Tadic talking about?” said retiree Goran Zlatic, 68. “The European Union won’t accept us for at least another seven to ten years. We can’t wait that long to start living better.”

Such sentiments are exploited by Kostunica, who was accused by critics of tacitly approving the embassy assaults. Kostunica continues to stoke nationalist sentiments, saying the EU “wants to snatch Kosovo” away from Serbia.

“It’s time for Serbia to turn the page and abandon the policy that there is no alternative to (joining) the European Union,” he said earlier this month.

Particularly controversial inside Serbia was Tadic’s apology earlier this month for crimes committed by Serbs against civilians during Croatia’s independence war.

The comments were hailed by the West as a symbolic step toward reconciliation 19 years after the start of the war. But lawmaker Milos Aligrudic, of Kostunica’s party, said Tadic’s apology represented “another humiliation.”

Tadic’s offer to discuss Kosovo’s status with its ethnic Albanian leaders also stokes distrust, even if he insists that Serbia will never recognize Kosovo’s independence.

The nationalists are also bitter about Serbia’s efforts to capture Mladic and the decision to increase the bounty on his head from euro1 million ($1.4 million) to euro10 million ($14 million).

A far right group promised the same amount to those who reveal the names of potential “traitors” who eventually lead to Mladic’s arrest.

DUSAN STOJANOVIC
Associated Press
November 23, 2010
Associated Press writer George Jahn contributed to this report from Vienna.

• A Permanent Economic Emergency