By Nick Thorpe

BBC News, Pristina

Ethnic Albanians showed their anger at the Serb vote going ahead Serbia is holding an early general election on Sunday - and 300 polling stations will open in Kosovo, despite the declaration of independence in February. The Serbs insist that Kosovo is still part of Serbia, and that no-one has the right to stop them flexing their democratic muscles. The Kosovan government and the UN mission in Kosovo protest that only the UN has the right to organise local elections in Kosovo - and will not recognise the results. But they have pledged not to stop the elections taking place. "Kosovo is an independent state and we act according to that position," deputy prime minister Hajredin Kuci told the BBC. "Unfortunately people in Serbia, especially the government of Serbia, are trying to use Serbs in Kosovo not as a bridge for co-operation between Serbia and Kosovo, but as a movement for the integration of Kosovo into Serbia... "In any case, we will not give them the chance to build up new institutions according to the result." But that is exactly what the Serbs intend to do. "These elections are important for us for many reasons," said Jovan Stojanovic, a candidate of the Movement for the Survival of Serbs, in Caglavica. "For the first time in nine years (since Nato replaced Serbian security forces in the province in 1999) we are going to choose legitimate local representatives." Displaced communities One of the many strange features about this election is that they are being organised according to the old, pre-1999 municipal boundaries. Serbian politicians have been campaigning in Kosovo's Serb areas So Mr Stojanovic is standing for a position on the Pristina city council, which will sit in exile in Gracanica - a parallel institution to the Albanian city council of Pristina elected in the Kosovan local elections last November. Kosovan Serbs boycotted that vote. "In the local elections we're choosing people who will organise all the main areas of our lives," said Zvonimir Stevic, candidate for the Socialist Party of Serbia in the same region. "They are the people who will represent us in negotiations with the international community, and with our neighbours the Albanians as well." Many Serbs in Kosovo's enclaves say that whatever the disagreements over the territory's status, whether it is now independent or not, it is high time Albanians and Serbs sat down and solved the real problems together - local problems like the daily power cuts, rubbish collection, water supply, sewage. Serb refugees from Kosovo are being encouraged to vote for the council of the town and village they fled from. Pristina: Some ethnic Albanians threw rubbish into the UN compound There are only a few hundred Serbs still living in Pristina. But there are around 6,000 Serbs displaced from Pristina on the voting register in central Kosovo, and a further 25,000 Serbs from Pristina now living in Serbia who can vote for the Pristina city council. Deepening split? Another oddity is that Albanians who fled to Kosovo from the Presevo Valley in southern Serbia in 2001, and now live as refugees in Kosovo, are being encouraged to cross back into Serbia this weekend, to vote for ethnic Albanian parties standing in the Serbian election. They currently have only one deputy in the Serbian parliament. Special buses are being laid on for the Albanians to go and vote in Serbia. No one appears quite sure what happens when the voting dies down. The biggest challenge to Kosovan independence would come if an idea put forward by Marko Jaksic, a prominent Serb nationalist standing for the Serbian Radical Party in northern Kosovo, is adopted by the new government in Belgrade. He has proposed the formation of a Serbian parliament in Kosovo, made up of those elected this weekend. "Serbs in Kosovo need a representative body through which they will realise their legal and legitimate rights," he told the Reuters news agency this week. In Pristina a rally against the Serbian elections, organised by student leader Albin Kurti's Self-determination movement, passed off peacefully on Friday. Participants dumped rubbish outside the government building, to demonstrate their anger at what they see as the failure of both the government and UN mission to prevent the Serb voting. They say the elections will serve to further partition Kosovo into Serb and Albanian areas, and will strengthen Serb ties to Belgrade, while weakening and undermining their ties to Pristina.



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