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Saturday, October 28 11:16 PM SGT

Kouchner promises new municipal poll in Kosovo Serb areas

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Oct 28 (AFP) -

Following the apparent success of Saturday's Kosovo municipal elections, UN
administrator
Bernard Kouchner announced new polls for the province's Serbs.

"We will reopen the electoral lists in the regions where the Serb majority was
not able to express
itself," he told reporters, promising new elections in Serb areas within months.

Kosovo's Serb minority boycotted Saturday's municipal election, the first since
Kouchner's UN
administration took over the Yugoslav province, fearing it would legitimise
ethnic Albanian demands
for independence.

But Kouchner said attitudes were changing.

"All of Kosovo's Serb leaders have come to me and said they are ready to take
part," he said,
speaking on the steps of a Pristina polling station in which ethnic Albanians
had voted enthusiastically
all day.

Kouchner held out the hope that after the replacement of Yugoslav president
Slobodan Milosevic,
who ordered Serbs not to take part, by Vojislav Kostunica, Serbs would be ready
to sign up.

But Kosovo's Serb leaders, including Kostunica supporters, had earlier condemned
Saturdays' poll.

Momcilo Trajkovic, Kosovo coordinator for the Democratic Opposition of Serbia
(DOS), which
backed Kostunica in his presidential bid, described the vote in Kosovo's 30
municipalities as "mere
window-dressing."

"These are not Kosovo's elections. These are Albanians' elections in Kosovo. We
do not recognise
the polls as being democratic in any way because they were deliberately framed
to exclude the
Serbs," he added.

Kostunica has described the Kosovo vote as "inopportune and wrong," insisting it
legitimises ethnic
cleansing of Serbs from the UN-administered province.

Four of Kosovo's municipalities have Serbian majority populations: Leposavic,
Zvecan, Zubin Potok
and Strpce. Mitrovica, like the town from which it takes its name, is divided
into a Serb dominated
north and Albanian south.