(BELGRADE) - Serbian nationalist leader Tomislav Nikolic said Friday he will form a moderate party open to European Union integration after abandoning the ultra-nationalist Radical Party.

Nikolic stormed out of a crisis meeting of the opposition Serbian Radical Party (SRS) before telling reporters it was clear he and his supporters were going to be expelled from the party.

"We left because we saw we did not belong there anymore. We will take our own political path, and the SRS will take its own," he said in a televised statement to reporters.

The party leadership said later it had unanimously decided to expel a Nikolic-led faction from the SRS, Beta news agency reported, citing senior party official Gordana Pop-Lazic.

Nikolic resigned last week as the acting leader of the Radicals, the single strongest party in the 250-seat parliament, after a policy dispute on the country's ties with the EU.

He also quit as party whip in parliament and formed his own parliamentary faction Monday, joined by 17 of the Radicals' 78 deputies.

Nikolic said he would begin creating "a party of the modern political right" next week that would "advocate cooperation with both the EU and Russia as well as for the preservation of (breakaway province of) Kosovo in Serbia."

The 56-year-old had led the Radicals since 2003, when former party leader Vojislav Seselj surrendered to a UN tribunal in The Hague, where he is being tried for war crimes.

At Friday's party meeting, a letter from Seselj was read out in which the firebrand leader accused Nikolic and his backers of "treason," according to Nikolic.

In the letter, which was published on the SRS website, Seselj said the dispute was "a conflict between the ideology of the SRS and pro-Western ideology."

Nikolic's ideology was shaped "by Washington, Brussels, staff of foreign embassies and oligarchs," Seselj wrote, labelling his former close ally and his supporters "traitors" and a "pro-Western puppet group."

Text and Picture Copyright 2008 AFP. All other Copyright 2008 EUbusiness Ltd. All rights reserved. This material is intended solely for personal use. Any other reproduction, publication or redistribution of this material without the written agreement of the copyright owner is strictly forbidden and any breach of copyright will be considered actionable.