Moderate ethnic Albanian nationalist, Mr Ibrahim Rugova, yesterday claimed victory for his party in general elections in Kosovo, and immediately called for independence for the UN-administered Yugoslav province.
"We insist that the independence of Kosovo is recognised as soon as possible, which will calm this part of Europe and the world," Mr Rugova told a news conference one day after the province-wide elections for a 120-member parliament.
"After yesterday's elections, we have proved that the citizens of Kosovo deserve independence." Officials of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), which will remain the ultimate authority in the predominantly ethnic Albanian province, have emphasised that the new assembly will never be allowed to declare independence for Kosovo from Yugoslavia, a fear of the minority Serb community.
The EU foreign policy chief, Mr Javier Solana, yesterday welcomed the first general elections in the province as a "decisive step" in the path to democracy.
"The peaceful and orderly conduct of the elections, as well as the high level of participation, show the enormous progress achieved in Kosovo," Mr Solana said in a statement.
Mr Solana was the head of NATO at the time of the alliance's 1999 military campaign in Yugoslavia.
"I particularly welcome the participation of all population groups, including the Serb community, in the vote," Mr Solana said.
Mr Rugova (57), who led a campaign of passive resistance against the regime of former Yugoslav president, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, in the 1990s, promised to work for the "real integration" of minorities, including Serbs, into society in the bitterly divided province.
"The Serbs and the other minorities will be integrated into Kosovo on the economic, social and institutional levels," he said.
"We will have a multi-ethnic society." He said his Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) won the election "with approximately 70 per cent of the vote." The LDK figure from was far more than the 45 per cent share predicted by an exit poll.
"It is a good percentage, which will reassure and encourage others to run Kosovo strongly and efficiently," Mr Rugova said.
Mr Rugova, a French-educated writer and professor of Albanian literature, is widely tipped to be elected president of Kosovo by the new parliament, which is supposed to meet within 30 days of the election.
The president is to nominate a prime minister, who in turn will form a government for Kosovo, a province in southern Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic.
The elections were the result of a UN Security Council resolution in June 1999 that authorised "substantial autonomy" for Kosovo, and the deployment of a NATO-led peacekeeping force, KFOR.
The resolution followed an 11-week NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia that forced Mr Milosevic to end a crackdown on ethnic Albanians in the province.
International observers in Pristina yesterday gave high marks to both voters and organisers in the elections, but warned that the new Albanian-dominated government should not repeat the mistakes of the province's recent past.
"We hope the Albanians will not follow what they learnt in the past nine years," said Ms Doris Pack, a German member of the European Parliament, referring to what she said was the "apartheid" inflicted on Kosovo Albanians by Mr Milosevic.
"We understand the difficulties of ethnic Serbs and other communities in Kosovo," said Mr Roman Jakic, a Slovenian member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the continent's human rights watchdog.
"It is vital that the new assembly . . . should work from the start on a multi-ethnic basis." Ms Pack and Mr Jakic were leaders of a 210-strong International Observation Mission at Saturday's general election in the UN-administered Yugoslav province.
The mission was "one of the biggest of its kind ever organised," the observers said in a press statement.
