[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH «ALBEUROPA»} Grenade Attack against Moderate Kosovo Candidate

[Nikoll A Mirakaj]

Grenade Attack against Moderate Kosovo Candidate 

PRISTINA, Oct 24, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) A candidate in Kosovo's municipal elections was targeted by a grenade in the latest in a series of attacks against members of Ibrahim Rugova's moderate LDK party, UN police spokesman Derek Chappell said Monday.

Fahri Morina, candidate for the Democratic League of Kosovo in the western Kosovo municipality of Djakovica, was not injured in the attack early Sunday which damaged his house, Chappell said.

The chairman of the LDK in Djakovica, Aqif Shehu, told AFP that three more candidates had been targeted but that grenades thrown at their homes had not exploded.

In a separate incident Sunday, an LDK candidate in Glogovac, central Kosovo, received a letter threatening his life, Chappell said. LDK officials say such letters are commonplace. Most warn recipients that if they don't quit politics they will be liquidated.

Since June 15 two senior LDK officials have been murdered, two more shot and wounded and a reporter working for a newspaper sympathetic to the party has been assassinated.

The LDK's main rivals in Saturday's municipal election, Kosovo's first since the end of the province's armed rebellion against Yugoslav rule, are the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) of former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci.

LDK officials who wished to remain anonymous have told AFP that the violence is orchestrated by people close to Thaci, and PDK supporters have been sanctioned by Kosovo's international election monitors for making violent pronouncements. But the UN mission has said no link has been proven between the party and the killings. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse) 

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