[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=AB?=ALBEUROPA=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BB?=} Milosevic Defeat will not Lessen Kosovo Wish for Independence

[Nikoll A Mirakaj]

Milosevic Defeat will not Lessen Kosovo Wish for Independence 

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Defeat for President Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia's election will not weaken Kosovo's desire for independence, the top UN official running the province said Wednesday.

"Certainly Kosovars want democracy in Serbia, but at the same time, the majority in Kosovo want independence," Bernard Kouchner told reporters here.

Yugoslav opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica "is perceived by Kosovars as a strong nationalist," Kouchner said.

Kostunica has been officially credited with winning 48.2 percent of the vote in elections held on Sunday, to 40.2 percent for Milosevic.

On Wednesday night, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in the capital, Belgrade, to press their claim that Kostunica had won more than 50 percent of the vote, and that a second round of voting was unnecessary.

Kouchner was in New York to brief the UN Security Council on the situation in Kosovo, which holds municipal elections on October 28.

He said that if there were a second round of voting in Yugoslavia, it might add to difficulty of policing the polls in Kosovo.

But in other respects, he said, it was "very difficult" to forecast the impact of the election on Kosovo, which has been under UN administration since NATO forces drove the Yugoslav army out of the province in June 1999.

"In the depth of their hearts," he said, the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo might want Milosevic to hang onto power in order to keep the spirit of independence strong.

But, he said, "the difference between Kostunica and Milosevic is not so high" in the opinion of Kosovars.

He said a photograph had been published of Kostunica holding a Kalashnikov automatic assault rifle.

"I don't know if it was a fake," he said. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse) 

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