FACTBOX: Nikolic, hardline frontrunner for Serb president

(Reuters) - Nationalist challenger Tomislav Nikolic won the most votes in the first round of Serbia's presidential election on Sunday and will face pro-Western incumbent Boris Tadic in a Feb 3 run-off.

Here is a brief profile of the veteran politician, who lost to Tadic in their 2004 second-round contest:

* The tall, solemn 55-year-old has led the Radicals since February 2003 when official party head Vojislav Seselj surrendered to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague to face charges of war crimes in the 1990s.

* Demonised by the West and liberal Serbs as the spiritual heir to Slobodan Milosevic, who led Serbia through a decade of wars and poverty, Nikolic has moved to shed the ultranationalist image with a softer line on national issues and populist pledges to battle corruption and boost living standards.

* He says he will never accept the loss of Kosovo, the breakaway province whose Albanian majority expects to get independence within months, but won't lead Serbia to war over it.

* He favors European Union membership but only on Serbia's terms, and is against the country joining NATO, which bombed it to expel its forces from Kosovo in 1999. He wants close ties with Russia, China and the Arab world.

* In May 2007 he was voted to the post of parliament speaker at the height of a political crisis between Serbia's pro-Western parties. International and domestic furor over his election led to him being deposed, making him the speaker with the shortest mandate in Serbian history.

(Writing by Ellie Tzortzi; Editing by Keith Weir)