Kostunica runs for Serb presidency

Kostunica said he will stand for the Serbian presidency in September

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica has confirmed he is to run for the post of Serbian president.

Kostunica's decision to fight next month's election pits him against Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus.

The poll will be a showdown between two camps from the reformist movement that ousted former President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

Labus declared his candidacy a month ago but Kostunica had kept the nation guessing about whether he would run for the top job in Yugoslavia's dominant republic.

He ended the speculation on Friday with an announcement at the headquarters of his Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS).

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"I have decided after long contemplation to propose to the main board of the DSS that it accepts me as candidate for President of Serbia," he said. "I have no doubt that they will accept."

Kostunica has been president of the Yugoslav federation since a mass uprising forced out Milosevic in October 2000.

But the federation is being remodelled into a looser union of its two republics, Serbia and Montenegro, forcing Kostunica to decide whether he wants to seek the presidency of the revamped state or become the leader of his native Serbia.

The term of current Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, indicted by a U.N. court on Kosovo war crimes charges, expires at the end of the year.

The first round of the election to replace him takes place on September 29.

If no candidate secures an absolute majority, the top two take part in a second round two weeks later.

In July, Kostunica's party was expelled from the Serbian parliament in a bitter political feud between Kostunica and Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.