Nato steps up security to protect Kosovo voters

Nato-led peacekeepers stepped up security and took extra precautions to prevent intimidation of voters taking part today in the first province-wide ballot since Nato and the United Nations took control over Kosovo.

Top alliance officials refused to reveal details but acknowledged that plans were in place to prevent trouble during a vote to elect officials who will help govern Kosovo.

‘‘We will remain vigilant in these final hours before the election day, during the day itself and days and weeks following,’’ said Lt Gen Marcel Valentin, commander of the Nato-led peacekeepers in Kosovo.

The heightened security comes amid increasing division in the province’s Serb community, which remains bitterly split over whether to take part in the vote that many see as a step toward independence for Kosovo, a southern province of Yugoslavia.

‘‘People here are so upset and confused. No one knows what to tell us about what will happen after the elections,’’ said Radomir Miljkovic, a Serb who owns a restaurant in the northern part of the province. ‘‘I am not going to vote I don’t want to legalize an Albanian government.’’

Polls opened as scheduled at 7am local time (0600 Irish time) with dozens of people lining up outside of schools and other polling stations.

Voters will elect a 120-seat national assembly that in turn will choose a president and form a provincial administration to govern alongside the UN officials and Nato-led peacekeepers. Serbs are guaranteed at least 10 seats in the future parliament, but can get at least 20 if their turnout is high.

Kosovo Albanians, the overwhelming majority in Kosovo, view the election as a step toward independence and an end to Kosovo’s political limbo.

But Serbs have been reluctant to take part, concerned that the vote will take Kosovo even further from Belgrade’s orbit nearly 2 1/2 years after the troops of former President Slobodan Milosevic ended their crackdown on Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority and ceded control of the province in exchange for an end to Nato bombing.

In the Serb half of the ethnically divided industrial city of Kosovska Mitrovica, some 25 miles north of provincial capital Pristina, tensions were palpable on the eve of the elections.

Nato peacekeepers stepped up patrols on streets deserted by early evening. Anti-election posters were plastered on buildings by Serb groups opposed to the ballot. Daylong power cuts and water shortages added to the prevailing gloom.

The government of Yugoslavia, of which Kosovo formally remains part of, has urged the Kosovo Serbs to participate in the elections. But some local Serb factions are opposed, fearing participation will legitimise ethnic Albanian control, and some Serb residents whispered about receiving threatening phone calls and letters urging a boycott of the ballot.

‘‘I am definitely not going to vote, that would be simply voting for the Albanians,’’ said Miodrag Ristic, a student in Kosovska Mitrovica.

Despite such sentiments, the head of the UN mission in Kosovo, Hans Haekkerup, said he expected a ‘‘reasonable turnout’’ of Serb community in the vote.

Serbs who are willing to vote want Nato-led peacekeepers and the United Nations to offer them better security and a chance for displaced people to go home safely.

Dozens of Serbs have been killed by revenge-minded ethnic Albanians and tens of thousands have fled the province since forces loyal to Milosevic were ousted after 78 days of Nato air strikes, ending fighting that killed at least 10,000 people, most of them ethnic Albanians.