* Alliance last in power together under Milosevic
* Western concern over commitment to pro-EU course
* Serbia sliding into recession, unemployment at 25 percent
BELGRADE, July 27 (Reuters) - The wartime spokesman of late
strongman Slobodan Milosevic was set to take power in Serbia on
Friday, telling the Balkans to forget the past and not fear the
return of a political alliance that once led the country to war
with NATO.
In a parliament debate that dragged into the night, Ivica
Dacic dismissed concerns in the West that Serbia might veer from
the pro-European Union path set by reformers who ousted
Milosevic 12 years ago and who now find themselves back in
opposition.
But the Socialist Party leader said he would not deal
anymore with his country's dark past.
"If they say the word Balkan means 'blood and honey',
there's been enough blood, it's time to feel the taste of honey
too," the 46-year-old prime minister-designate told the
assembly.
"Serbia is offering the hand of reconciliation, to all.
Let's not deal anymore with the past, let's deal with the
future."
The West is closely scrutinising Dacic's assent to the post
of prime minister, in an alliance with the nationalists of
Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic, for any sign that Serbia may
drift from the path chosen by the entire ex-Yugoslavia to join
the EU.
The two last shared power at the close of Milosevic's
disastrous 13-year rule, when his forces expelled hundreds of
thousands of majority ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and NATO
bombed for 11 weeks in 1999 to wrest the province from him.
Dacic was Milosevic's spokesman, railing against the West.
He now says Serbia's future is in the EU, but Western diplomats
admit to deep unease over whether he is really committed to the
political and economic reforms it will take.
His government inherits an economy sliding into recession,
an unemployment rate of 25.5 percent and a shrinking, ageing
population that scrapes by on an average net monthly wage of 340
euros ($420). The dinar has hit a succession of record lows
against the euro on investor uncertainty over the policy of the
new government.
"A key goal of this government will be the acceleration of
European integration and maximum effort to secure a date for the
start of accession talks," Dacic said.
A vote on his cabinet had been expected on Thursday but the
heated debate ran into Friday.
Kosovo was Milosevic's last throw of the dice, after
fomenting wars in Croatia and Bosnia that killed some 125,000
people as federal Yugoslavia fell apart. He died in 2006 in a
cell in The Hague, on trial for genocide and other war crimes.
"A BALKAN QUAGMIRE"
The West says Serbia's progress towards EU membership rests
on it coming to terms with the loss of Kosovo, an impoverished
territory steeped in history and myth for many Serbs but
recognised by almost half the world as independent.
Dacic said he was ready to continue EU-mediated talks with
Kosovo aimed at "normalising life for all citizens". But Serbia
would never recognise it as independent, he said.
The EU says it won't have to, at least explicitly, but it
will have to loosen its grip on a Serb-populated slice of
Kosovo's north, and stop obstructing the country's development.
Dacic's cooperation on Kosovo will determine how quickly the
EU opens accession talks with Serbia, which became an official
candidate for membership in March.
Opposition lawmaker Nenad Canak, a sharp-tongued critic of
the Socialists, said the past would not be forgotten so easily
"like it was some boring past of minor bickering over interest
rates, and not a Balkan quagmire of five wars and hundreds of
thousands of dead and displaced."
Ex-Yugoslav republic Slovenia joined the EU in 2004. Croatia
is next in 2013 and Montenegro began talks last month.
Dacic was interior minister in the last government with the
reformist Democratic Party from 2008, until voters punished the
Democrats for perceived elitism and an economic downturn.
After nationalist leader Nikolic won the presidency in May,
Dacic switched allegiances with the president's Serbian
Progressives, a party that emerged from the ultranationalist
Radical Party allied with Milosevic in the late 1990s.
With the technocrat United Regions bloc and a handful of
smaller parties, the coalition holds around 140 of the Serbian
parliament's 250 seats.
United Regions leader Mladjan Dinkic, who played rock guitar
at rallies against Milosevic, becomes finance minister in an
unlikely alliance with the parties he protested against.
The new foreign minister is Ivan Mrkic, a career diplomat
who was ambassador in Cyprus under Milosevic at a time when,
according to reformers, millions of dollars were siphoned out of
Serbia via Nicosia.
($1 = 0.8130 euros)
(Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Paul Simao)