Serbia elected a president Sunday, on the fourth try. In choosing the more European-oriented candidate, Boris Tadic, the Serbs appear to have made the right choice.

Serbia, as part of the former Yugoslavia, has been in intermittent political turmoil since the early 1990s. The sometimes extreme nationalist and erratic aspects of succeeding governments' policies also have served to virtually preclude the economic recovery and development of the country as well. Aid donors and investors have largely stayed away.

Serbia had a law on the books that said a president could be elected only if 50 percent of the voters cast ballots. They didn't, three times in nearly two years. Finally, the parliament changed the law and, on Sunday, the second round of presidential elections took place. A conservative nationalist candidate, Tomislav Nikolic of the Serbian Radical Party, was pitted against Boris Tadic of the Democratic Party.

Mr. Tadic ran on a platform that pledged reforms that would improve Serbia's prospects for eventual admission to the European Union -- the only road to future prosperity for the country -- and cooperation with the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, part of the price to be paid for international help.

In the event, Mr. Tadic, the Europeanist, received 54 percent of the vote; Mr. Nikolic, the face of old-time Serbian nationalism, received 45 percent. The turnout was a respectable 48 percent. It is estimated that the votes of the educated middle class threw the elections to Mr. Tadic, representing a majority vote for the future of Serbia.

It is critical that Serbia and Montenegro, a country with a population of some 10.5 million in the center of Europe, be on the right track. At its recent worst, under the leadership of former leader Slobodan Milosevic, currently on trial in The Hague for war crimes, Serbia was able to plunge a good part of the Balkans into bloody warfare.

The road ahead will not be easy for Mr. Tadic. His first job will be to bring about the capture of two Bosnian Serb leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who are responsible for a good amount of the carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1992-95 period. They have been as elusive as al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden and the Taliban's Mullah Omar.

At the same time, a Serbia on the right track is capable of resuming a position of political leadership and economic development in a still-troubled region. We wish Mr. Tadic all success. America needs to support him in his efforts to achieve reform and justice in an important country.