- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday August 8 2000 01.40 BST
"We unanimously decided to name Vojislav Kostunica as our joint candidate," Dusan Mihajlovic, leader of the New Democracy party, said.
Party officials met in Belgrade to make their decision after crisis talks with the biggest opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), which had nominated its own candidate on Sunday despite appeals not to risk splitting the opposition vote by going its own way.
The SPO leader, Vuk Draskovic, said that he had not changed his mind about his candidate, the Belgrade mayor Vojislav Mihajlovic, who the rest of the opposition fear will split the anti-Milosevic vote in the September 24 election.
Mr Kostunica, chosen by the other parties because his nationalism reflects popular opinion in Serbia, yesterday abandoned his acceptance condition that Montenegro, Yugoslavia's smaller republic, would stop its boycott of the vote. The public was expecting him to run, he said.
A recent opinion poll gave Mr Kostunica greater popularity than President Milosevic, while the Belgrade mayor backed by Vuk Draskovic has not even appeared on pollsters' lists.
The Democratic party leader, Zoran Djindjic, said Mr Draskovic would not discuss a joint candidate.
Mr Mihajlovic said that Mr Draskovic's insistence on his own presidential runner meant that he could not join their candidate lists for local elections, also due September 24.
"We unanimously supported the idea of going together with SPO to all elections, but after the SPO came out with its separate presidential candidate, we decided that a coalition is impossible at one level if there is competition at another."
Mr Djindjic said Mr Kostunica's advantage was that he could travel to Montenegro and Kosovo, whereas Mr Milosevic could not.
Montenegro's pro-western authorities have agreed to cooperate with the UN war crimes tribunal. It has indicted Mr Milosevic for war crimes committed by Serb forces last year in Kosovo before Nato bombing forced the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from the province, which mainly ethnic Albanian .
"Our candidate can go everywhere," Mr Djindjic said. "And where can Mr Milosevic go? To his bunker. Well, let him win in his bunker; we will win in Serbia."
On the right, meanwhile, the ultra-nationalist Radical party has proposed Tomislav Nikolic, its vice-president and Yugoslav deputy prime minister, as its presidential candidate for September.
