President's party wins most votes in Kosovo polls: observers
Pakistan Times Wire Service

PRISTINA (Serbia-Montenegro): President Ibrahim Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo became the biggest party in the province's general election, but fell short of winning an overall majority to form a government by itself, estimates by independent observers showed Sunday.

Rugova's party won 47 percent of the vote while its main rival, the Democratic Party of Kosovo of former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci, gained 27 percent, said Ibrahim Makolli of the non-government monitor Center for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms.

Makolli said the estimate was based on the preliminary ballot count of some 17 percent of votes cast, but added that final results would differ by only 0.5 percent.

The Alliance for the Future of Kosovo of former guerrilla leader Ramush Haradinaj was third with eight percent and trailing behind was a political newcomer, prominent media tycoon Veton Surroi whose Ora (Hour) party garnered six percent of the vote, Makolli said.

If the results were confirmed, no single party would be able to form the government and a coalition government would have to be negotiated, as had been the case after the 2001 general election.

Earlier Saturday, the central electoral commission said turnout among Kosovo's 1.4 million eligible voters was 53 percent. The vote for Kosovo's 120-seat assembly is seen as a test for the international community's efforts to build a multi-ethnic democracy in the southern Serbian province which has been administered by the United Nations since a NATO bombing campaign forced Belgrade to withdraw its troops in June 1999.

But as the polls closed it became clear that the vast majority of ethnic Serbs had boycotted the vote demanding greater autonomy and security in the mainly ethnic Albanian province.●