http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=237063&section=Kosovo

Nationalists Want Serb Assembly to Meet in Kosovo

BELGRADE, Dec 27, 2000 -- (Reuters) Ultra-nationalists who scraped into
Serbia's new reformist-led parliament demanded on Tuesday that its first session
be held in Kosovo, to reassert the country's rights over its lost province.

"We expect other parties' support as well as permission from the international
community to hold the first session of Serbia's new parliament in Pristina,"
said
Borislav Pelevic, head of a small party founded by slain warlord Arkan.

The Party of Serbian Unity (SSJ) leader said the second session should then be
held in a part of southern Serbia bordering Kosovo where tensions rose after
ethnic Albanian guerrillas killed four Serb policemen last month.

"The deputies have to show they are ready to defend the country," Pelevic told a
news conference.

The SSJ, founded in 1991 by Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, a wartime paramilitary
leader who was gunned down in a Belgrade hotel in January, leads a far-right
coalition that won 14 out of 250 seats in the parliament in elections last
Saturday.

They and 23 deputies of Vojislav Seselj's Radicals represent hardline
nationalists
in an assembly led by reformers who swept Yugoslav ex-leader Slobodan
Milosevic's Socialists out of power.

In 1991, the SSJ had five deputies in Serbia's parliament, including Arkan, but
they left politics to form a paramilitary unit to fight against Croatia's drive
for
independence.

Arkan's Serb Volunteer Guard was disbanded in late 1995, but he was accused
of committing some of the worst atrocities in the Croatian and Bosnian wars. He
was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

ULTRA-NATIONALIST VOTE SURPRISED REFORMERS

Though insignificant in practical terms, the SSJ's 5.44 percent of the vote came
as
a surprise to the reformists who back the new Yugoslav President Vojislav
Kostunica.

The SSJ group includes the Party of Serbian Progress, the Peasants' Party of
Serbia and the United Pensioner Party.

But Pelevic said he was disappointed with the results.

"All our opinion polls showed at least 10 percent of support, but we were
ignored
by media, the turnout was low and refugees from Kosovo were denied right to
vote," he said.

After NATO bombing in 1999, Milosevic pulled his security forces out of
Kosovo, Serbia's southern province whose people are mainly ethnic Albanians
now intent on full independence.

There is no real chance the Serbian parliament could meet there even if it
wanted
to make a symbolic show that it still considers itself as the rightful authority
there.
But for the nationalists, regaining Kosovo is still a sacred cause.

Zoran Djindjic, Serbian prime minister-designate, suggested tensions in the
troubled parts of southern Serbia bordering Kosovo had boosted the vote for
Arkan's successors.

He said on Sunday support for the SSJ was proof of how carefully society must
be healed to avoid radical demagogy.

But Pelevic denied his party was militant or radical.

"We support President Kostunica in his effort to resolve the situation in the
south
by diplomacy, but we say that diplomacy must be more intense, tougher," he said.