http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=201134

Ballot Boxes Arrive in Kosovo for Yugoslavian Elections

STRPCE, Yugoslavia, Sep 20, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Ballot boxes for use
in Yugoslavia's federal and presidential elections arrived in the Kosovo Serb
enclave of Strpce late Tuesday, four days ahead of the controversial poll,
officials told AFP.

Sixty-six white-painted wooden boxes were delivered to the Strpce municipal
building, which houses both the local UN administration and the Serb-run
municipal council, an AFP reporter saw.

The room in which they were held was not locked, but the building was guarded by
a Serb officer of the Kosovo Police Service.

Several officials of President Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party
(SPS) traveled to pick up the boxes in the southern Serbian town of Vranje on
Tuesday, Jovica Budurica, local party chairman, told AFP.

They brought the boxes back into the UN-run province of Kosovo in a regular
convoy escorted by peacekeeping troops from the KFOR peacekeeping force, he
explained.

Voting slips were also delivered with the boxes, Bovica said, but an AFP
reporter at the scene could not confirm this.

On Sunday the boxes will be distributed to 33 polling stations in the
municipality, set up in schools, cultural centers, hotels and private houses,
according to a document obtained by AFP.

Strpce, an essentially rural municipality on Kosovo's mountainous southern
border with Macedonia, has a population of 13,185 of which 9,133 are Serbs,
according to local UN administrator Charles Messier.

The holding of polling for Yugoslavia's September 24 federal and presidential
elections in Kosovo has been attacked as a "farce" and a "provocation" by
Bernard Kouchner, the head of the province's UN mission (UNMIK) and Kosovo's de
facto governor.

In particular there is a fear that Milosevic will exploit the tense security
situation in Kosovo as a smokescreen to conceal ballot rigging in his battle to
avoid being toppled by opposition challenger Vojislav Kostunica.

Although the UN resolution which gave Kouchner his mandate states the territory
is legally part of Yugoslavia, Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority is fiercely
opposed to any vote that could strengthen Belgrade's claim on the province.

Kouchner reiterated Tuesday at a Pristina news conference that his
administration wanted no part in the poll.

"UNMIK alone is responsible for organizing elections in Kosovo and all other
activity is illegitimate," he declared. "UNMIK will not organize, support,
condone or legitimize Federal Yugoslavian elections in Kosovo."

"UNMIK will bear witness to any inflated claims related to the so-called federal
elections in Kosovo. We will not officially monitor any polling facility but
UNMIK and KFOR we will be in a position to assess the approximate magnitude of
the activities in Kosovo," he said.

In Strpce voting will begin at 7:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) Sunday and continue until
8:00 p.m., political party officials said.

Ten officials from parties including the SPS, the Serbian Radical Party (SRS)
and the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), will oversee the vote in each
station.

A member of Yugoslavia's electoral commission, Peka Obradovic, announced last
week that 300 polling stations would be set up in Kosovo, which has been under
UN control since the end of a civil war between ethnic Albanian separatists and
Yugoslav forces in June last year.


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