Kosovo elections set to pave way for independence

Kosovo will hold local and parliamentary elections on Saturday (17 November), just weeks before a deadline for international negotiators to report back to the UN on options for a final status of this nominally Serbian province.

Kosovo has been under UN administration since 1999, when Serbian forces were evicted by NATO, but has its own government and parliament. The date for the poll was set by UN administrator Joachim Rücker.

Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian parties - Albanians make up over 90% of the province’s population of some two million - are united behind the goal of independence, which Serbia opposes.

Talks in Vienna and Brussels between the two sides have not yielded any agreement and are unlikely to do so before negotiators issue their report on 10 December. It is almost certain that Kosovo’s government will declare independence shortly afterwards.

The US and several key EU member states are expected to recognise an independent Kosovo, but several other EU members are ambivalent or opposed.

Recent statements suggest that the Kosovar authorities will co-ordinate the declaration to ensure that they have the support of key foreign governments.

Prime Minister Agim Çeku, a former chief of staff of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), will not run for office again.

Kosovo has been governed by a coalition of Çeku’s Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) and the once-dominant Democratic League of Kosovo of late President Ibrahim Rugova since the last elections in 2004, when AAK leader Ramush Haradinaj became prime minister.

Haradinaj, also a former KLA commander, resigned in March 2005 after being indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He is currently standing trial in The Hague.

The hard-line Democratic Party of Kosovo of Hashim Thaçi, another former KLA commander, is expected to do well in the elections.

Kosovo will hold local and parliamentary elections on Saturday (17 November), just weeks before a deadline for international negotiators to report back to the UN on options for a final status of this nominally Serbian province.