In a blow to international efforts to forge multiethnic harmony in Kosovo, the vast majority of Serbs boycotted the province's general elections.
Election officials estimated turnout in Saturday's election at 53 percent, but the absence of Kosovo Serb voters underscored the deep divisions between the province's ethnic Albanian majority and Serb minority. Local Serb leaders had called for a boycott, citing a lack of security.
Turnout in the general elections three years ago was about 64 percent. Saturday's vote represented the second general election in beleaguered Kosovo, where an unemployment rate estimated at 60 percent has exacerbated political and economic woes in the province.
Kosovo's ethnic Albanians viewed Saturday's elections as means to further their goal of securing independence. Kosovo Serbs and Belgrade want the province to remain part of Serbia-Montenegro, the successor to Yugoslavia.
Lawmakers elected Saturday are likely to lead the province into UN-led talks on its future. The talks are expected to begin the middle of next year if the province makes progress in fields such as the rule of law and protection of minorities.
Preliminary results were expected today; final results a week later.
An independent group that monitored ballot counting in 17 percent of the polling stations said the results appeared to be similar to those from the election held three years ago.
The Pristina-based Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms projected that Kosovo's biggest party, the Democratic League of Kosovo led by moderate President Ibrahim Rugova captured 47 percent of the vote -- too little to govern alone.
The projection indicated that the Democratic Party of Kosovo placed second with 27 percent, followed by the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo with 8 percent. Both parties are led by former rebel leaders.
Ibrahim Makolli, a CDHRF official, said the projection had a margin of error of 0.5 percentage point.
Kosovo was placed under UN and NATO rule in 1999, after an alliance air war ended former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on independence-minded ethnic Albanians.
The 1998-99 war killed an estimated 10,000 people, mainly ethnic Albanians.
Though the UN mission here holds ultimate power, the 120-seat assembly elected Saturday -- and the president and government it chooses -- holds some authority. Ten assembly seats are reserved for the Serb minority -- about 100,000 of Kosovo's 2 million people.
The election came seven months after mobs of ethnic Albanians attacked Serbs and their property in riots that killed 19 people and injured more than 900 others. The violence was the worst since the 1998-99 Kosovo war.
After the voting ended, Kosovo's top UN administrator, Soeren Jessen-Petersen, said he thought many Kosovo Serbs were pressured to avoid the polls.
But despite "the low turnout, we have legitimate elected representatives of the Kosovo Serbs," he added.
Serb leader and boycott organizer Milan Ivanovic estimated the Serb turnout at three-tenths of a percent, and described the boycott as successful.
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