http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,27679,00.html

THE LONDON (UK) TIMES
TUESDAY OCTOBER 31 2000

Kosovo election won by Rugova

FROM JOHN PHILLIPS IN PRISTINA

THE party of the moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova
won Kosovo's first free elections decisively, according to partial
results, and Hacim Thaci, leader of the former Kosovo Liberation
Army, said that he would respect the outcome.

Mr Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo won 21 of 27
municipal election races, boosting the mandate of United Nations
administrators to reconcile ethnic Albanians and Serbs after a
vicious war and to build democratic self-rule in the province.

"This election has been a victory for moderation and maturity,"
Bernard Kouchner, the UN administration chief, said.

Based on a 90 per cent count with a turnout close to 80 per cent,
Mr Rugova's LDK party won 58 per cent of the vote. The former
guerrilla Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK)won 27 per cent,
and an ultra-nationalist offshoot 7.7 per cent.

Final official results will be out later this week, according to the
Organisation for Security of Co-operation in Europe, which ran
the election.

Mr Thaci, having alleged earlier that widespread fraud and
intimidation took place during Saturday's poll, said that he would
respect the voters' verdict. Diplomats had been concerned that
PDK militants might not yield municipal posts seized in the chaotic
aftermath of the war last year.

Mr Rugova, head of the oldest, most mainstream Kosovo
Albanian party, said that the poll's fair conduct justified faster
moves toward independence from Yugoslavia, resisted by Serbs.