Kosovo's moderate Democratic League of Kosovo has taken up to 60 per cent of the vote in the province's municipal election, opening the door to possible self-government in Kosovo under continuing NATO and UN administration, the party's leader announced yesterday.
Independent election monitors who provided a count of voting in 15 out of Kosovo's 30 municipalities confirmed that over 60 per cent had been won by the LDK.
The Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, the international body tasked with overseeing the election, said counting of votes was continuing and no official results would be available before today.
"Based on preliminary data, the Democratic League of Kosovo took 60 per cent of the vote," the party leader, Dr Ibrahim Rugova, declared at a packed press conference in his Pristina house.
Seated underneath photographs of himself shaking hands with Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul, a beaming Dr Rugova, wearing his trademark scarf, denied that Yugoslav territorial aspirations towards Kosovo and the technicalities of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 made independence for Kosovo impossible.
"Resolution 1244 [which keeps Kosovo firmly under Yugoslav sovereignty] is a big compromise," said Dr Rugova, "to end a war that took place in Kosovo. It leaves the door open for final status in Kosovo."
He said the next elections could be "very soon, by the latest next June, and both presidential and parliamentary elections are possible."
The US ambassador to the UN, Mr Richard Holbrooke, said last week in Pristina that talks on the future status of Kosovo should take place "as soon as possible".
Dr Rugova suggested that this final status could either be decided in a referendum, or could be straightforward recognition of Kosovo with self-government with a continuing NATO and UN presence in the province, where NATO intervened last June with over 40,000 ground troops after a 77-day bombing campaign.
An estimated 901,000 people, almost all Kosovan Albanians, registered to vote for 19 parties and two coalitions in Kosovo's first-ever above-board election, with Dr Rugova's LDK party confidently expected to scoop more than 50 per cent of the vote, which will appoint mayors to Kosovo's municipalities.
No reaction was available from the Democratic Party of Kosovo, led by Mr Hashim Thaci, a former Kosovo Liberation Army commander whose party was expected to take up to 20 per cent.
Voting ended on Saturday night after a day of OSCE-organised polling in confused and chaotic conditions. The process itself was extremely complicated, and voters in the western Kosovan town of Klina, many of whom were illiterate, had to be helped to choose their vote.
"Illiteracy is a big problem. It's to be expected in these rural areas," said an OSCE polling station supervisor, Ms Caroline Koroma.