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Thursday, September 21 8:23 PM SGT

Opposition cries foul as Milosevic eyes Kosovo vote reservoir

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia, Sept 21 (AFP) -
Opponents of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic fear he is preparing massive
vote fraud in this northern Kosovo town and other Serb enclaves to stave off a
looming defeat in Sunday's presidential election.

"One thing is clear. If Milosevic does not succeed in stealing votes in Kosovo,
he'll lose on the first round," said Nebosja Minic of the Democratic Opposition
of Serbia (DOS), an 18 party opposition coalition.

Vojislav Kostunica, DOS's presidential candidate, is the only challenger with a
hope of toppling Milosevic in Sunday's first round of voting.

Fraud is possible anywhere in Yugoslavia, where Milosevic's Socialist Party of
Serbia (SPS) and its allies have a tight grip on polling procedures, but in the
anarchic post-war atmosphere of UN-run Kosovo it is a particular risk.

The opposition's fears are shared by Kosovo's UN administration, whose head,
Bernard Kouchner, has already vowed to do nothing to assist the organisation of
a Yugoslav poll he has written off as a "farce."

The UN mission has called on the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in
Europe (OSCE), already strongly represented in Kosovo to oversee upcoming
UN-backed municipal elections, to keep a low-key eye on polling and report on
exaggerated claims.

"We will not be monitoring the elections as such," OSCE spokesman Roland Bless
said, "But we are witnessing what is going on as part of an UN-led operation ...
You cannot judge the Yugoslav elections on Kosovo alone, but if Kosovo makes the
balance tip then we should know what is going on on the ground."

Observers believe the election's first weakness in the province is the state of
electoral lists.

According to several sources the lists have not been updated since the last
Yugoslav legislative elections in 1996 and do not take into account the massive
movements of people during by the 1998-1999 civil war.

The UN High Commission for Refugees estimates at 187,000 the number of
non-Albanian Kosovars, 90 percent of them Serbs, to have fled a wave of ethnic
violence that swept the province after the war.

Many of the 100,000 strong group of Serbs who remained have also been displaced,
largely into the mainly Serb north of the province or into a handful of
enclaves.

Each displaced person will have to right to vote in their new home area, but in
the absence of reliable voting lists there will be no way of telling if any of
them have voted more than once in different areas.

"The new electoral law is an open door to fraud," Marko Blagojevic, an official
of the Belgrade-based civic rights group CESID, told AFP by telephone.

Oliver Ivanovic, the most vocal leader of the Serbs in northern Kosovo and a
Kostunica supporter, agreed. "No one can control multiple voting," he said.

Milosevic's man in Kosovska Mitrovica, SPS representative Ljubisa Marovic,
dismisses the worries and describes the election arrangements as "normal."

The decision by Belgrade to open 283 polling stations in the province, including
some in areas with an ethnic Albanian majority, has also worried the opposition.

The ethnic Albanians, who do not recognise Belgrade's authority and have
boycotted every federal and presidential poll since Kosovo was stripped of its
autonomy in 1989, will not vote.

This detail may not stop Milosevic, however, from stuffing ballot boxes with
votes from Albanian majority municipalities as he has allegedly done before.

"In 1997, according to official figures, 300,000 Kosovo Albanians voted for
Milan Milutinovic, the SPS candidate for Serbia's presidential election,"
Blagojevic said.

SPS man Marovic tols AFP he was sure the Albanians would vote, and in numbers,
for Milosevic, depsite his brutal camapign of repression against the Albanian
community which triggered the civil war and saw him indicted on war crimes
charges by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

"The SPS programme is based on peace, equality, tolerance and prosperity,"
Marovic said, "Since they have been living in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
the Albanians have taken steps towards civilisation."



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