Global Policy Forum

By Dave Clark and Beatrice Debut

Kosovo's Serb minority will participate in a new round of UN-run municipal elections to be held because it boycotted a previous poll, a spokeswoman for the community's main political group said Wednesday.

Rada Trajkovic, a leading member of the Serbian National Council (SNC), told reporters that the body would meet Kosovo's UN chief Bernard Kouchner to arrange voter registration for an election to be held "within a few months."

The registration would take in both the 100,000 or so Serbs still living in the UN-run Yugoslav province and the 170,000 which have fled to Serbia-proper in the 16 months since a NATO-led peacekeeping force arrived in Kosovo, she said. The SNC also expected to take part in Serbian legislative elections on December 23, she said.

Kosovo's Serbs boycotted the province's first post war election on Saturday, fearing that it would reinforce ethnic Albanian demands for independence. Serb leaders also claimed they had had no freedom of movement or expression. "We don't have basic human rights now in Kosovo," said Trajkovic, who travels with armed guards when outside Kosovo's remaining Serb enclaves.

Although Saturday's election was peaceful by Kosovo standards, and no violence broke out between rival ethnic Albanian groups, an elderly Serb woman was stabbed and injured by two Albanian-speaking men and the home of a Serb couple was targeted in a grenade attack, UN police said. Kosovo Serb leaders claim that 1,000 Serbs have been killed or "disappeared" since the United Nations took control of the province.

Trajkovic said the decision to participate in by-elections to choose Serb representatives for the municipal councils did not add up to acceptance that Kosovo was on its way to independence. "Living in Kosovo I have a right to participate in local elections," she said, "And as an inhabitant of Serbia I have the right to participate in elections in Serbia as well, under the constitution which is still in power."

Saturday's municipal election, which was won by Ibrahim Rugova's ethnic Albanian nationalist Democratic League (LDK) of Kosovo, was organised by Kouchner as part of his mandate to give Kosovo what the UN terms "substantial autonomy." Following the vote, in which no Serb parties stood and only a tiny handful of Serbs voted, Kouchner offered to hold by-elections for the Serbs.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica said Tuesday that he could not recognise Kosovo's "mono-ethnic" elections, which the ethnic Albanians see as their first step on the road to an independence that Belgrade has vowed never to accept. But Kostunica also offered to hold talks on the future of Kosovo with Rugova, a fellow moderate, even if both are completely at odds over the issue of sovereignty. For its part, Rugova's LDK said it was "too early" to accept the invitation.

The Serbian elections called by Belgrade will be the next big headache for Kouchner's UN mission after the successful, albeit Serb-free, municipals. Kouchner said at a post municipal press conference that no decision had yet been made concerning their organisation. Kosovo is legally Yugoslav territory and, following the precedent set by the September 24 Yugoslav presidential poll, Kouchner could not prevent polling taking place there. But Kosovo Albanians are opposed to any reminder of Belgrade's claim on them, and any attempt to conduct UN approved Yugoslav elections in the province could provoke violence.