http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=215451&section=Kosovo

Albanians Hail, Radical Serbs Dismiss Kosovo Poll

PRISTINA, Oct 31, 2000 -- (Reuters) Ethnic Albanians on Monday hailed the
victory of moderates in a landmark Kosovo election, but Serbs dismissed the
ballot as irrelevant and local media warned voters not to expect too much.

"People are exhausted, they have suffered so much in the last 10 years, they had
to
vote for peace and tolerance," said Hashim Jonuzi, 46, overjoyed that Ibrahim
Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) had claimed victory.

"I do not know when I have been as happy," he said in Pristina.

Despite a challenge from former guerrilla commander Hashim Thaci's Democratic
Party of Kosovo (PDK), Rugova's party appeared to be the winner in the election
held on Saturday for Kosovo's 30 municipalities.

While Thaci took up arms, Rugova led passive resistance to former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic for a decade.

"I am happy that the LDK claims victory as they were the ones who carried the
heaviest burden over those 10 years and I think they are politically more
mature,"
said Baki Bajgora, 34.

But Oliver Ivanovic, political leader of the Serb community in the divided city
of
Mitrovica dismissed the election, for which very few Serbs registered. In
Mitrovica
only one voted.

"I am not interested in it," he told Reuters by telephone. "Rugova or Thaci, it
makes no difference to us. They both ask for Kosovo independence, for Kosovo
without Serbs."

Asked what he thought of Rugova's pledge of cooperation across political and
ethnic lines, Ivanovic said: "I do not believe in it, Thaci said the same and
look
what he has done."

He was referring to widespread intimidation of local Serbs by ethnic Albanians
who took their revenge for years of suffering under Belgrade after Yugoslav
forces
were driven out of Kosovo last year following NATO bombing.

But the more moderate Serb National Council of Kosovo (SNV), based in the
Serbian historical monastery of Gracanica near Pristina, said it viewed the
election
result "with cautions optimism", according to Yugoslavia's independent Beta news
agency.

It said that on the one hand the LDK had not been involved in violence against
Kosovo Serbs but on the other it had not shown readiness for a dialogue with
them after the war.

Beta quoted the SNV as saying that Rugova "was known before the war as a
symbol of non-violent resistance and now the LDK has a chance to...show its real
face".

Kosovo became a UN protectorate last year after the bombing ended a
crackdown in which at least 2,000 members of the province's ethnic Albanian
majority had been killed. About one million were expelled during the war.

Vladan Batic, one of the leaders of new President Vojislav Kostunica's
Democratic Opposition of Serbia rejected the poll, but told a news conference in
Belgrade on Monday:

"...we can say that it is positive that ethnic Albanian citizens from Kosovo
have
opted for a more moderate, more democratic, more liberal option and not for an
option which is defined by separatism and terrorism."

Rugova is committed to independence for Kosovo, but the independent Zeri
newspaper said that the LDK would have to work hard in many other areas to
keep the confidence of voters.

"It will find it difficult to fulfil the dreams of people, who after the
elections expect
jobs and wealth, shelter and security, order and peace, education, health and
social care," the newspaper said.