Kosovo holds parliamentary elections

PanARMENIAN.Net - Kosovo voted Saturday to elect a government that would lead the troubled province to independence as demanded by majority Albanians but fiercely resisted by Serbs.



Amid chilly weather following overnight snowfall, people began casting ballots after more than 2,000 polling booths opened across the province at 7:00 am (0600 GMT) for 12 hours of voting.



"It has started well. There were some small delays in opening (some) polling stations, but there were no big difficulties and no incidents so far," said Ilir Dugolli of Democracy In Action, an independent poll monitoring group.



"It is cold outside. If people already had doubts about voting, especially in the countryside, that might be an extra reason not to vote."



Coming less than a month before the end of internationally mediated talks on Kosovo's future status, the elections pit the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) against the ruling Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK).



"It's not important for whom I voted. I cast my ballot for independence," said Nerxhivane Dauti, an unemployed ethnic Albanian teacher who voted in the provincial capital Pristina.



"The newly elected government, whatever political side it comes from, will be legitimized after the elections to push strongly for Kosovo's independence," the 32-year-old added.



Tensions were high for the parliamentary, mayoral and municipal elections after the Serbian government urged Kosovo's 100,000 anti-independence Serbs to boycott the polls.



NATO's 16,000 peacekeepers were bolstered by hundreds of reinforcements before the polls in which 1.5 million voters were to cast ballots.



Security was especially tight in the flashpoint town of Kosovska Mitrovica, where the Ibar river splits rival Albanian and Serb communities.



The UN mission which has run Kosovo since its 1998-1999 war, UNMIK, is worried Serbs might attempt to block polling stations in the divided northern town, where Serb authorities have denied them access to some buildings.



As a response, UNMIK and elections watchdog the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe opened a makeshift polling station for Serbs at an Albanian-owned shop in Mitrovica's north.



They also deployed a "mobile polling station" on the back of an OSCE truck in Zvecan, a Serb-populated area 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) north of Mitrovica.



"Why should I vote when all those Albanians didn't want to turn out for our (December 2006 Serbian general) elections?" asked Dragan Simic, a 24-year-old Serb boycotter in Mitrovica.



"If I knew that everything finished as it should and that Kosovo stays within Serbia, and my Serbia tells me to go to vote, I would go and do it straight away."



Most Serbs consider Kosovo the cradle of their nation's history, culture and religion.



But Kosovo has been managed by UNMIK since mid-1999 when a NATO bombing campaign drove out forces loyal to late Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic over a brutal crackdown on Albanian separatists and their civilian supporters.



At stake in the polls are places in the 120-seat provincial assembly, 100 of them reserved for parties representing independence-seeking Albanians who account for at least 90 percent of Kosovo's two million population.



The rest of the posts are set aside for Serbs and other minorities.



The PDK is headed by Hashim Thaci, former leader of the political wing of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which fought Serbian forces in the war.



Many believe the biggest surprise could come from the New Kosovo Alliance, a party led by the richest man in the province, construction magnate Behgjet Pacolli.



Agim Ceku, who has filled the role of prime minister since his predecessor resigned under pressure almost two years ago, is not standing in the elections.



Some 150 Council of Europe observers and 25,000 local monitors will watch for irregularities, the AFP reports.