http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?f=/stories/20001030/445772.htm\
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NATIONAL POST, Monday, October 30, 2000

Moderates claim win in Kosovo

Key municipal elections: KLA rivals expected to lose government posts

Juliette Terzieff
National Post, with files from news services

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia - Ibrahim Rugova, leader of the moderate Democratic
League of Kosovo (LDK) claimed victory yesterday in the province's first
post-war municipal elections and called for immediate independence from
Yugoslavia.

"Yesterday, the people of Kosovo really demonstrated they are ready for
peace and democracy, and that they are capable of running Kosovo," said
Mr. Rugova, who claimed his party had won 60% of the vote.

If confirmed, the results would give Mr. Rugova a crushing victory over
the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) of Hashim Thaci, the former
political leader of the officially disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA), and could provoke a backlash from former guerrillas, many of whom
might be forced to give up powerful posts as a result of the vote.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which
organized the election for Kosovo's UN-led administration, has said
official results will not be available until today. Final results are
expected within eight to 12 days.

Though nominally an election for municipal councils, the vote is widely
seen as a test of who will lead the province in its quest for
independence from Yugoslavia.

At Mr. Rugova's Pristina headquarters, the mood was jubilant. "Look at
this," cried one staff member while guests sang loud renditions of
Albanian songs. "In Pristina we got 60%, in Mitrovica 70%, Ferizaj 65%,
and it is the same almost everywhere."

A couple of streets away, the offices of the PDK were silent. Supporters
sat around glumly while Mr. Thaci closeted himself in his office,
emerging only once in an hour to stride, head down, from one room to
another.

"We have no results yet," said spokesman Ramadan Avdiu. "Maybe tomorrow,
or the day after."

Up until yesterday morning the PDK, made up primarily of former KLA
fighters and their leaders, was predicting widespread victory, at least
in the countryside, where their armed fight for independence from Serbia
began in earnest. KLA officials frequently pointed to the fact that they
had achieved the end of Serb rule in one year while ridiculing as
fruitless Mr. Rugova's decade-long campaign of pacifist disobedience.

But the "war hero" image of the KLA has been tarnished over the past 15
months by persistent accusations of involvement in organized crime and
intimidation of political opponents.

It is unclear what reaction the more radical elements will have to final
election results, which are likely to require vacating powerful
positions they seized after Serbian troops left the province.

"We are unpleasantly surprised," said Sherif Konjufca, spokesman for the
Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK), a coalition of five parties led
by another former KLA commander, Ramush Haradinaj. "We believed the
people who fought to make this possible would be rewarded."

The turnout in Saturday's poll was massive -- estimated by the OSCE at
more than 80% -- and many of the province's polling centres stayed open
after the planned closing time to allow the voting to continue.

Kosovo's Serb minority boycotted the poll en masse, fearing it will
strengthen ethnic Albanian demands for independence from Yugoslavia.

Even with only preliminary results in yesterday, the self-proclaimed
victors wasted no time setting the tone for future talks on
independence.

"It's a question of how we are going to achieve it -- a referendum or
negotiations at the United Nations," Mr. Rugova said. "I have another
proposal -- that it would be better if Kosovo's independence were
recognized today."

Kosovo has been under a United Nations-led interim administration
installed in June, 1999, following a NATO bombing campaign aimed at
ending former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic's brutal crackdown
on the province's two million ethnic Albanians.


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