BELGRADE -- Radical nationalists in the mould of ousted Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic are contesting the Serbian presidential election, but their glory days in power are over.

Vojislav Seselj, President of the Serb Radical Party (SRS), and Borislav Pelevic, leader of the Serb Party of Unity (SSJ), have no chance of winning Sunday's election, according to opinion polls.

They owe their survival, analysts say, to deep feelings of nationalist frustration among those sections of Serbian society most affected by the wars of the 1990s, particularly the poor and refugees from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, AFP reported.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently accused Belgrade's reformist government, which extradited Milosevic to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague last year, of failing to confront ultra-nationalist groups.

It cited extremists' repeated and sometimes violent disruption of an exhibition of wartime photographs depicting the aftermath of Serb military operations in Bosnia during the 1992-95 war there.

"The problem stems from the government's reluctance to seriously confront the issue of war crimes against non-Serbs in the former Yugoslavia," said HRW Executive Director for Europe and Central Asia, Elizabeth Anderson. "Those who wish to talk or learn about the crimes face intimidation and the government tacitly consents."

In a nutshell, nationalists like Seselj and Pelevic argue that the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia were the victims of those states' independence movements, and the UN tribunal is an anti-Serb witch-hunt by the Western powers.

Some commentators have warned that Seselj, credited with around 13 percent of voter support, could be the election's wild card in the way right-wing leader Jean-Marie le Pen won his way into the second round of France's presidential elections earlier this year, although the chances are remote.

A veteran of two presidential races in the past decade, his best performance was a narrow loss to Milosevic ally Milan Milutinovic in the second round of the last election in 1997.

This time he has the open backing of Milosevic, who has sent instructions from his prison cell in The Hague to his die-hard loyalists to vote for the SRS leader.

The move split his own Socialist Party, which had already nominated a popular actor as its presidential candidate.

During his rule as Yugoslav president in the 1990s, Milosevic once described Seselj, 48, as his "preferred opponent". The SRS leader clashed with Milosevic on several occasions, but he later became deputy Serbian prime minister.

The bonds between them appear to have firmed over the years.

Seselj last month published the transcripts of Milosevic's trial in The Hague as "proof" that the tribunal was biased.

"Once I am elected as the president of Serbia, I will visit Milosevic and the other Serb detainees in The Hague," he said in a recent campaign speech.

Pelevic, 46, is perhaps best known overseas as the vice-president of the World Kick-Boxing Federation, but at home his reputation as a hardliner comes from his days as a former deputy commander with the notorious paramilitary forces of Zeljko Raznjatovic Arkan.

Arkan was assassinated in 2000, but Pelevic is still riding on his legend and the enormous popularity of the late warlord's glamorous folk-singer wife, Ceca. Even so, pollsters give him only five percent of the national vote.

In the leadup to the election, Seselj and Pelevic have toned down their usual anti-West rhetoric in belated recognition that most Serbs want economic, rather than nationalist, revival.

Seselj recently said he was the "only candidate capable of destroying the Mafia and organized crime".

"Only after our victory over the Mafia can we discuss economic prosperity," he said.