Renewed ethnic tensions and uncertainty over final status talks overshadowed Kosovo's general election yesterday, the second in the province since the 1998-99 war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian separatists.
The vote for the 120-seat assembly is seen as a test of the international community's efforts to build a multi-ethnic democracy in the southern Serbian province, administered by the UN since NATO bombing forced Belgrade troops to withdraw in June 1999.
But it has been marred by calls for ethnic Serbs to boycott the vote over security fears after 19 people died when mobs from the ethnic Albanian majority rioted through Serb villages in March, the worst violence here since the war.
More than 1,000 extra NATO peacekeepers have been deployed to Kosovo to secure the election. The Kosovo force (KFOR) is already the North-Atlantic alliance's biggest mission with some 19,000 troops in the field.
"KFOR will play its full part in maintaining a peaceful environment, and NATO has deployed additional forces into Kosovo and the region to demonstrate our capability and our resolve," NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Friday.
Kosovo police spokesman Refki Morina said police were also out in force, with all 6,000 local officers on duty "to ensure security and safety."
Kosovo's chief UN administrator, Soren Jessen-Petersen, said the election marked a "turning point" and would set the stage for a UN review of democracy standards early next year and possible talks on final status.
Ethnic Albanians demand complete independence from Serbia but ethnic Serbs and the government in Belgrade insist that the territory is an inalienable part of the former Yugoslav republic.
"Kosovo's Serbs need legitimately elected leaders who can engage with the challenges ahead," Jessen-Petersen wrote Saturday in the International Herald Tribune.
He said security was a top priority and urged Serbs to vote, while calling on Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica to drop his support of the boycott.
"Attempting to block Kosovo's Serbs from realizing their democratic rights not only hurts them but also hinders the progress of the rest of the region," he said.
"Since ethnic Albanians rioted against minority Serbs in March, the damage has begun to be repaired and Kosovo has moved forward."
Some 1.3 million Kosovo residents and about 100,000 displaced people are eligible to vote for deputies in the provincial parliament, which has responsibility for day-to-day matters under the more powerful UN administration.
More than 1,600 polling stations opened across the province at 7:00am and were to close at 8:00pm, with some 12,000 local and international observers on hand to look for irregularities.
In the northern, mainly Serb town Zvecan a lone voter had cast his ballot 90 minutes after the polls opened. Kosovo Serb leaders gathered in a nearby Orthodox church to light candles "for a better future for the Serb people."
"We haven't noticed that elections are being held today," said Milan Ivanovic, a prominent Kosovo Serb.
Analysts believe a boycott will deprive the Serbs of legitimate leaders to participate in any future talks on the province's status and the future of the UN protectorate.
On the other hand, Kosovo Albanians expect the new assembly to provide a provisional Albanian-dominated government that will prepare for final status talks with the UN, tentatively slated for mid-2005.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
RSS