Sunday’s balloting is key for Serbia’s plans to become an EU member, after being an isolated pariah state under late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic in the ’90s. It also could determine whether Serbia continues to reconcile with its neighbors, including the former province of Kosovo which declared independence in 2008.

The two leading contenders are Boris Tadic and his pro-EU Democratic Party, and Tomislav Nikolic, whose nationalist Serbian Progressive Party has Russia’s support.

A presidential runoff is expected in two weeks as both Tadic — who had been president until he resigned so that all three polls could be held together — and Nikolic are unlikely to get more than 50 percent of the first round vote.

In March, Tadic led Serbia’s bid to gain EU candidate status, following the long-awaited arrest of Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. The wartime Bosnian Serb leaders were turned over to a U.N. tribunal in the Netherlands to face genocide charges for their part in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Nikolic, a former ally of Milosevic who lost power in a popular revolt in 2000, has struck a chord with voters for criticizing widespread social injustice and corruption in Serbia, and for promising jobs, financial security and billions of dollars in foreign investments if he and his party win the elections.

Despite occasional outbursts of nationalist rhetoric, the pre-election campaign has mainly focused on the Balkan country’s flagging economy that includes a staggering 24 percent unemployment rate and a $30-billion (€23 billion) foreign debt.

“The economy is the most important issue at hand for all the voters, there’s no question about that,” said Srdjan Bogosavljevic, from Ipsos Stretegic Marketing polling agency. “The economic situation is much worse than people have expected it to be.”

Tadic’s biggest problem remains the economic downturn and corruption within the ruling elite. Faced with the global financial crisis, which slowed down much needed foreign investments, Tadic’s government has seen massive job losses and plummeting living standards.

“People are struggling to survive,” says Aleksandar Ristic, a 30-year-old with a small business in the capital of Belgrade. “People are fed up with them all.”

Nikolic, who has narrowly lost two earlier presidential votes against Tadic, claims to have shifted from being staunchly anti-Western to pro-EU, and says that he wants Serbia both “in the West and the East.”

But hardly anyone in the pro-democratic camp believes that the former far-right politician, who only a few years ago said that he would rather see Serbia become a Russian province than an EU member, has so dramatically shifted his stance.

“We want the EU, it has jobs and investment for us,” Nikolic said during his campaign. “But if they say: You can join the EU but Kosovo isn’t yours — then thank you and good bye, we have our own road.”

All recent polls have suggested that the pro-EU and nationalist camps are virtually neck-and-neck, with Tadic and his democrats slightly trailing, but with bigger negotiating potential to attract smaller parties to form a coalition government.

Tadic has had the support of the Socialists, the party founded by Milosevic, but which has switched to a pro-EU stance.

Polls indicate Nikolic would not be able to come to power without the help of a small conservative party led by former president and prime minister Vojislav Kostunica, which is staunchly anti-EU and seeks close ties with Russia instead.

Though the outgoing Serbian government was pro-Western, Serbia is traditionally an ally of Russia, which supported its opposition to the independence of Kosovo that is considered the cradle of Serbian statehood and religion.

Several other parties and presidential candidates will take part in the elections, but they are considered long shots.

Tadic has urged voters to allow him and his democrats to “finish the job” of restructuring Serbia’s economy along EU standards, and continue reconciling with its wartime foes, Bosnia and Croatia.

Tadic has also overseen a more conciliatory stance toward Kosovo than Nikolic, who was in Milosevic’s government during a violent crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists in 1999. Most EU countries and the United States have recognized Kosovo’s independence, but not Serbia or Russia.

“We must show that Serbia is a country that wants to join the EU and does not want to quarrel with its neighbors,” Tadic said.

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Associated Press correspondent Dusan Stojanovic contributed.

Hours later, Hadzic was brought in for questioning at the war crimes court in the capital Belgrade, a key step toward his extradition to the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. His lawyer said Hadzic will not appeal the process, paving the way for a quick extradition, possibly within the next few days.

State TV footage showed Hadzic entering the courtroom escorted by guards. He walked slowly, slightly hunched, wearing a gray shirt, short hair and a mustache. His black beard had been shaved.

An unknown figure before the 1991-1995 ethnic war for control of Croatia, Hadzic suddenly rose to prominence through his links to Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s secret police. Put in charge of the self-styled Serb ministate in eastern Croatia, he was seen as a pawn of criminal gangs that collaborated heavily with the secret police and made huge profits from smuggled cars, gasoline and cigarettes.

The Hague tribunal indicted him in 2004 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including the murder, torture, deportation and forcible transfer of Croats and other non-Serbs from the territories he controlled.

Less than two months after the capture of Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, Serbia’s Western-leaning president announced live on national television that “Serbia has concluded its most difficult chapter in the cooperation with the Hague Tribunal.”

“It was our moral duty,” President Boris Tadic said. “We have done this for the sake of citizens of Serbia, we have done this for the sake of the victims amongst other nations, we have done this for the sake of reconciliation, we have done this for the sake of establishing credibility of all societies, not only Serbian society.”

In his indictment Hadzic is accused of responsibility for the 1991 leveling of Vukovar, said to be the first European city entirely destroyed since World War II.

In one of the worst massacres in the Croatian conflict, Serb forces seized at least 264 non-Serbs from Vukovar Hospital after a three-month siege of the city, took them to a nearby pig farm, tortured, shot and buried them in an unmarked mass grave.

A month before about 20 kilometers (12.43 miles) southwest of Vukovar, about 50 Croats who had been detained for forced labor were made to walk through a minefield to render it safe for the Serbs, according to the indictment.

“Upon reaching the minefield, the detainees were forced to enter the minefield and sweep their feet in front of them to clear the field of mines,” it said.

Hadzic worked with paramilitary forces that became notorious for their brutality, including the “Tigers,” led by Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan. In that same month of October 1991, Arkan’s men captured 28 civilians from a police facility in Dalj, tortured them and threw their bodies in the Danube. Arkan was assassinated in a Belgrade hotel in 2000.

Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said the arrests of Mladic and Hadzic “mark a long-awaited step forward in Serbia’s cooperation.”

EU leaders immediately welcomed the arrest and saluted “the determination and commitment” of Tadic’s government.

“This is a further important step for Serbia in realizing its European perspective and equally crucial for international justice,” said a joint statement by EU president Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barrios and foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

A tribunal statement said Hadzic will be transferred to The Hague as soon as judicial procedures are completed in Serbia. That normally takes several days.

He will then be brought before a judge to hear a reading of the 14 charges against him. He may enter a plea or delay for a month.

Tribunal president O-Gon Kwon said the arrest was a milestone in the history of the court, which has indicted 161 leaders from the former Yugoslavia since it was created in 1993 at the height of the fighting.

The tribunal has been under U.N. pressure to wind up its cases and close its doors.

Serbian security police found out that Hadzic was meeting a money courier and arrested him Wednesday morning outside the village of Krusedol, Serbian war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told reports.

Until this week, Tadic said, Serbian officials did not know where Goran Hadzic was, despite suspicions that he had been sheltered by former allies.

In the past, Hadzic had narrowly escaped arrest, apparently due to tips from within the Serbian security authorities. Serbia’s post-war authorities have for years faced accusations that they are not doing enough to hunt down the war crimes suspects.

Serbia, widely viewed as the main culprit for the wars in the Balkans, has been working to reintegrate into the international community following years of sanctions and pariah status in the 1990s.

Milosevic was extradited to the Hague tribunal in 2001 and died there in 2006, while on trial for genocide.

Along with Mladic, Serbia has also arrested war crimes fugitives Radovan Karadzic. Both are currently facing war crimes charges in the Hague.

Dusan Stojanovic and Slobodan Lekic contributed.

Serbian Justice Minister Snezana Malovic has scheduled a press conference for 5 p.m. (1500 GMT; 11 a.m. EDT) Tuesday at which she is expected to announce she signed the extradition order.

Asked if this means that the transfer will happen on Tuesday, Vukcevic said “not necessarily.”

“It will depend on the evaluation on how this should be done so as not to disturb the public,” he said, adding no one will be informed when Mladic will be transported from prison and flown to the Netherlands because of security risks.

Mladic is charged at the tribunal for atrocities committed by his Serb troops during Bosnia’s 1992-5 war, including the notorious Srebrenica massacre that left 8,000 Muslim men and boys dead — the worst atrocity against civilians in Europe since World War II.

Mladic was arrested Thursday in a village north of Belgrade after 16 years on the run, looking worn and disheveled. In addition to the appeal, Mladic attorney Milos Saljic had asked for a team of doctors to examine Mladic, who is said to have suffered at least two strokes.

Prosecutors accused Mladic of using delaying tactics and said nothing should prevent his extradition to the tribunal, maintaining that doctors who have examined him say Mladic is in good enough health to face trial.

Earlier Tuesday, the ex-general was briefly released from his jail cell, traveling in a secret high-security armored convoy to a suburban cemetery where he visited the grave of the daughter who killed herself in 1994 during the war, reportedly because she was depressed over his brutal role in the war.

At the black marble grave, he left a lit candle and a small white bouquet of flowers with a red rose in the middle, in what prosecutors called an emotional visit.

“We didn’t announce his visit to the grave because it is his private thing and because it represented a security risk,” deputy war crimes prosecutor Bruno Vekaric said. “The whole operation lasted for exactly 22 minutes and passed without a glitch. He was at the grave for a few minutes.”

Mladic had repeatedly demanded that he be allowed to visit the grave, a memorial he had avoided for years as he tried to avoid capture.

“We had cameras there and 24-hour surveillance, so he could absolutely not show up there,” Vukcevic told the AP. “I’ve been told that he reacted emotionally.”

Mladic’s 23-year-old daughter Ana, a medical student, committed suicide in 1994 with her father’s pistol. She reportedly never wrote a suicide note, but media at the time said she ended her life at Mladic’s Belgrade family house because of depression caused by her father’s role in the war.

Mladic has rejected the official investigation into his case and claimed she was killed by his wartime enemies, saying the pistol was found in her left hand, although she was right-handed.

Kadira Gabeljic, whose husband and two sons were killed in the Srebrenica slaughter, reacted with disbelief and anger at Mladic’s visit to his daughter’s grave, saying she almost fainted at the news.

So far, she said, forensic experts have managed to exhume only part of the remains of her sons, Mesud and Meho, who were 16 and 21 when killed.

“He was allowed to do it, and I am still searching for my children for the past 16 years, ever since Srebrenica happened,” she said.

“My husband had been found, but what about my children?,” she asked. “I will wait for years. I might even die before their complete remains are found.”

Serb nationalists in Serbia and parts of Bosnia still consider Mladic a hero — the general who against all odds tried to defend ethnic Serbs in the Bosnian conflict. In the Bosnian city of Banja Luka, thousands of supporters protested his arrest Tuesday, in the biggest demonstration so far in the country.

Demonstrators chanted Mladic’s name, and carried his picture alongside those of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev, whom they consider their biggest allies.

On Monday, Serbian President Boris Tadic rejected speculation that authorities had known of Mladic’s hiding place and delayed his arrest to coincide with a visit by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. The rumors have persisted because Mladic was found living not far from the capital, Belgrade, with relatives who share his last name.

The president said it’s time for the European Union to do its part by boosting his nation’s efforts to join the bloc, arguing the arrest of Mladic proves it is serious about rejoining the international fold.

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Sabina Niksic contributed to this report.

The U.N. tribunal charged Mladic with genocide in 1995, accusing him of orchestrating the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica and other war crimes — the worst slaughter of civilians in Europe since World War II.

Saljic said he will file Mladic’s appeal against extradition by mail on Monday afternoon.

Justice ministry official Slobodan Homen said extradition could take between two and four days to complete.

“Sending the appeal by mail is an attempt to delay the extradition process,” he said.

On Sunday, protesters hurled stones and bottles in clashes with baton-wielding riot police in Belgrade after several thousand nationalist supporters of Mladic rallied outside the parliament building to demand his release.

By the time the crowds broke up by late evening, about 180 people were arrested and 43 injuries were reported, mostly policemen. That amounted to a victory for the pro-Western government, which arrested Mladic, risking the wrath of the nationalist old guard in a country with a history of much larger and more virulent protests.

Rioters overturned garbage containers, broke traffic lights and set off firecrackers as they rampaged through downtown. Cordons of riot police blocked their advances, and skirmishes took place in several locations in the center of the capital.

The clashes began after a rally that drew at least 7,000 demonstrators, many singing nationalist songs and carrying banners honoring Mladic. Some chanted right-wing slogans and a few gave Nazi salutes.

The demonstrators, who consider Mladic a hero, said Serbia should not hand him over to the U.N. court in The Hague, Netherlands.

Demonstrators demanded the ouster of Serbian President Boris Tadic, who ordered Mladic’s arrest. A sign on the stage read, “Tadic is not Serbia.”

Nationalists are furious that the Serbian government apprehended Mladic after nearly 16 years on the run. The 69-year-old former general was caught at a relative’s home in a northern Serbian village.

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Dusan Stojanovic and Danica Kirka contributed.

Now a disheveled old man, his family claim he’s too ill to stand up to the rigors of a genocide trial and that he’s not guilty of crimes including his alleged role in the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II, the massacre that left 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Srebrenica enclave in Bosnia dead.

Serbia’s war crimes court ruled that te 69-year-old is fit to stand trial and that conditions have been met for him to be handed over to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague. A defense lawyer said Mladic would appeal the decision on Monday. The former fugitive could be extradited within hours if that appeal is rejected.

His defense is demanding that an “independent medical commission” examine Mladic — preferably one from Russia, a historical friend of the Serbs. Instead the government dispatched the health minister, a former friend, who deemed him stable.

Serbian war crimes prosecutors argue that the defense was simply trying to delay the extradition, and the tribunal promises it is capable of dealing with any health problems.

Mladic was in command of the Bosnian Serb army during the country’s 1992-95 war, which left more than 100,000 people dead and drove another 1.8 million from their homes. Thousands of Muslims and Croats were slain, tortured or expelled in a campaign to purge the region of non-Serbs.

Mladic’s ruthlessness was legendary: “Burn their brains!” he once bellowed as his men pounded Sarajevo with artillery fire. So was his opinion of himself: He nicknamed himself “God,” and kept goats which he was said to have named after Western leaders he despised.

He eluded the net of war crimes investigators for years after his 1995 indictment by the U.N. war crimes court on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity — until going out into his garden for a pre-dawn walk.

New details emerged Friday of the raid, revealing it was more of a shot in the dark than a pinpoint operation. Police had been conducting similar operations throughout Serbia for years.

Two dozen masked, black-clad members of a team of special police had no specific intelligence that Mladic was inside a relative’s yellow brick house in Lazarevo, a village they were visiting for the first time.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, Serbian police officials told the AP that Mladic identified himself immediately after his arrest, handing over two pistols that he was carrying without a fight.

“Good work,” Mladic told the officers, according to Serbian police chief Ivica Dacic. “You found the one you were looking for.”

A police photo of Mladic showed him looking hollow-cheeked and shrunken after a decade and a half on the run, a far cry from the beefy commander he once was. The photo taken moments after his arrest in a tiny northern Serbian village shows a clean-shaven Mladic with thinning hair and wearing a navy blue baseball hat. He looks up with wide eyes, as if in surprise.

By Friday, however, after a night’s sleep, Mladic was digging in his heels, refusing to remove the cap, demanding he receive money from his military pension, and requesting a visit to the Belgrade grave of his daughter Ana, who killed herself in 1994, said a judicial official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

He received a visit from his son, who said if Mladic is extradited he will argue that he’s innocent of war crimes charges.

“His stand is that he’s not guilty of what he’s being accused of,” Darko Mladic told reporters outside the Belgrade court.

The chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal said he was considering whether to put Mladic on trial together with former Bosnian Serb political leader Karadzic. Serge Brammertz said that ideally he would have both men in one trial, facing charges of jointly orchestrating Serb atrocities throughout the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Karadzic’s ongoing trial started in 2009 and a Mladic trial would not begin for months, but Brammertz said he is confident he has “strong and credible evidence” against him.

Serbia had been under intense pressure to find the war crimes suspect, with the EU insisting that his capture was necessary for its membership bid and Brammertz accusing the country of a lack of cooperation in tracking him down.

While in Belgrade in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Mladic showed up at soccer games, dined in plush restaurants and frequented elite cafes.

Although he went underground in 2002, as recently as 2004 Mladic was seen driving a battered, boxy Yugo car in Belgrade — without the six black-clad bodyguards with shaven heads who had typically escorted him.

Dacic said new police leadership increased the number of people hunting for Mladic by 50 percent. Police officials said they learned that Mladic moved into the largely Bosnian Serb village of Lazarevo about two years ago, figuring he could be safe with his relatives there.

But, Mladic turns out not to have had the large support network of hardline supporters that many believed had helped him hide out for so long, Dacic said.

“Mladic lived alone with his relatives, without any financial means,” the chief told reporters Friday. “The stories that he had a major ring of security and many helpers turned out not to be true.”

Even so, some residents of Lazarevo remained defiant.

“I know everybody in this village. Even if we saw him, they would have never been able to find him, if we knew,” said villager Nedeljko Arsic. “we would have hidden him and they would have never been able to find him and arrest him.”

Serbian officials said no one will pick up the $10 million (euro7 million) reward for Mladic’s arrest because police were not acting on a tip when they arrested him.

The arrest was trumpeted by the government as a victory for a country worthy of EU membership and Western embrace.

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Aida Cerkez in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Danica Kirka in Belgrade and Slobodan Lekic in Brussels contributed to this report.