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Friday, September 22 8:50 PM SGT

Kosovo Albanians secretly hope for Milosevic victory

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Sept 22 (AFP) -
They won't vote for him themselves, but many in Kosovo's ethnic Albanian
majority are secretly hoping that President Slobodan Milosevic will survive
Sunday's presidential vote, despite years of suffering at his hands.

"It's certain that Kosovo will win its independence more quickly if Milosevic
stays in power," Gjergj Dedaj, head of the Kosovo Liberal Party, told AFP,
summing up the logic behind the Kosovo Albanians' thinking.

"With Milosevic in Belgrade the international community will have to urgently
accept Kosovo's independence, because it can't continue to work with a state
ruled by a war criminal," added the leader, who lost 12 members of his family
during Kosovo's 1998-1999 war between Albanian separatists and Milosevic's
forces.

Milosevic has been indicted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

Many ethnic Albanian politicians, and voters, share Dedaj's opinion, even if few
of them say it openly.

Instead, party chiefs proclaim themselves supremely indifferent towards the
federal and presidential elections that will take place on Sunday in what Hashim
Thaci, leader of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, calls a "foreign country" --
Yugoslavia.

Kosovo has been governed by a UN mission since June last year, when a 78-day
NATO air bombardment finally brought to an end a war between Yugoslav forces and
the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, of which Thaci was the political head.

Under UN Security Council 1244 the mission, headed by former French health
minister Bernard Kouchner, is mandated to develop "substantial automony" for
Kosovo, but rules that it remains a "province of Federal Yugoslavia."

Kosovo's ethnic Albanians have boycotted all Yugoslavian elections since 1989,
when Milosevic stripped the province of its autonomy, and will do so again on
Sunday, knowing that to vote would be tacitly to endorse Yugoslav sovereignty.

"Nevertheless, we have to accept that we're still part of Yugoslavia," admitted
an ethnic Albanian political expert, who wished to remain anonymous.

"No-one dares say it, but secretly we're all keeping a close eye on the
election, because it's critical for our future."

A victory for Milosevic's main opposition challenger, Vojislav Kostunica, which
would delight western leaders, would not be welcome in Kosovo.

"For us Kostunica and Milosevic are the same," said Marita, a Pristina student,
"But not for the international community."

"If Kostunica wins, the internationals will say 'calm down, you have
democracy'," she predicted.

The European Union and the United States have said that they would move to lift
trade and diplomatic sanctions enforced against Yugoslavia since 1992 after an
opposition victory.

Kosovo's Albanians will vote in UN-backed municipal elections on October 28, the
next stage in what they hope will be a process that leads inevitably towards
self-determination.

"As long as Milosevic is there, we have no problem," the Pristina expert
explained, "For us his re-election would be a historic chance, because we have
never been so ready for independence."



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