Kosovo prepares for crucial election

Kosovo voters elect new politicians tomorrow who are likely to lead the ethnically divided, UN administered province into talks that could determine its final status.

About 1.3 million voters are eligible to elect representatives to a 120 seat assembly. The parliament will in turn elect a president and a government that holds some authority, while ultimate power over day-to-day decision-making will remain with the UN mission.

The election is considered a major test for international officials’ efforts to reconcile Kosovo’s bitterly divided ethnic Albanian and Serb communities and establish a multiethnic society.

Preliminary results expected on Monday and final results a week later.

The vote is Kosovo’s first to be organised by a local election commission. About 13,000 observers will monitor the balloting.

Underscoring the significance of the vote, Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, whose alliance has 18,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo, urged all registered voters to participate in what he called “an important step in building Kosovo’s future.”

The vote will be Kosovo’s second general election since it came under UN and Nato rule in 1999, when a Nato air war ended former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown against independence-minded ethnic Albanians. The 1998-99 war killed an estimated 10,000 people, mainly ethnic Albanians.

Kosovo formally remains part of Serbia-Montenegro, but its final status is to be decided through negotiations expected to begin next year.

Under an internationally agreed strategy, if progress is achieved by mid-2005 in areas such as the rule of law and minority protection, negotiations will start on whether Kosovo should become independent – a key ethnic Albanian desire - or remain part of Serbia-Montenegro, as the province’s minority Serbs demand.

Ethnic Albanians, who make 90% of Kosovo’s two million, were backing candidates who have promised to lift the province out from its political limbo and make it independent.

The majority of Serb leaders in Kosovo and Serbia have encouraged a boycott, citing a lack of security.