http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=213622&section=Kosovo

Belgrade Hostile Towards "Untimely" Kosovo Elections

BELGRADE, Oct 26, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Despite the recent
changeover of power in Belgrade, senior political figures in Serbia have
expressed
open hostility towards Saturday's municipal elections in the UN-administered
province of Kosovo.

Yugoslavia's new pro-reform President Vojislav Kostunica described the vote as
"inopportune and wrong" in a recent interview, insisting the elections would
"legalize ethnic cleansing against the Serbs" living in the province.

He suggested at the Balkan summit in Skopje on Wednesay that "it would be
preferable if the elections were postponed.

"But, as far as I'm concerned, these elections are a fact. They have already
been
organized, they will produce certain results, and we will just have to see after
that
what the situation is," he told reporters.

More than 170,000 Serbs have fled Kosovo, faced with threats and reprisals by
ethnic Albanians since the arrival in the province last June of multinational
KFOR
troops, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
estimates.

The 110,000 Serbs remaining in the province have decided to boycott the
municipal polls, with fewer than 1,000 having registered to vote.

Belgrade has also accused KFOR and the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) of
having done too little to prevent the killing or kidnapping of more than 1,000
Serbs
since Yugoslav troops withdrew from the province in June 1999 at the end of the
NATO air war.

"The conditions for elections in Kosovo have not been met," Zoran Djindjic of
the
Democratic Opposition of Serbia, which backed Kostunica's presidential bid, told
AFP.

"Serbs should be first allowed to go out on the streets without fear for their
lives,
and only then be given the opportunity to vote," he explained.

Djindjic said that, instead of the vote, the international community should have
first
strengthened the police force, secured the region, organized a proper
registration in
the province and the "return of those who want to come back and live in Kosovo."

Predrag Simic, advisor to opposition leader Vuk Draskovic, called the elections
"premature" and "illegitimate," because of the non-participation of Serbs and
their
"extremely difficult" situation.

The Socialist Party of former president Slobodan Milosevic and the
ultranationalist
Serbian Radical Party have both decried the Kosovo elections as an attempt to
achieve the "Albanisation" of Kosovo.

But in addition to calling for improvements in the living conditions of the
province's
Serbs, Belgrade had also demanded that its authority in Kosovo be enhanced
ahead of the elections.

UN Security Council resolution 1244, which formally ended the 78-day NATO
bombing campaign and led to the Yugoslav retreat from Kosovo, calls for a
"substantial autonomy" for the province within the federal republic of
Yugoslavia --
which comprises Serbia and Montenegro.

The resolution, recognized as the "bible on Kosovo" by the European Union,
United States and Russia, calls for Yugoslavia's sovereignty and territorial
integrity
to be respected.

It also calls for a contingent of Yugoslav army soldiers and Serbian policemen
to
be allowed to return to Kosovo.

As long as Milosvic held sway in Yugoslavia, the policy of the Western alliance
was geared at isolating his regime by severing virtually all official contacts
with
Belgrade.

However, Kostunica's dramatic election, supported by the West and by Russia,
should permit the full implementation of the UN resolution, and a degree of
Yugoslav authority to be restored to Kosovo, Belgrade argues.