Sign-Up Deadline for Kosovo Vote Extended

The United Nations extended the registration deadline for Kosovo’s first internationally supervised election after hearing that some Serbs were considering participating in the balloting.

Serbian leaders had been refusing to encourage their followers to register until the United Nations fulfills several demands, chiefly the return of thousands of Serbs who fled the province after a 78-day air campaign by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization forced the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops in June 1999.

Leaders of the 15,000-member Turkish minority also were boycotting to press demands that the Turkish language be considered equal under the law with Albanian and Serbian.

Kosovars from all ethnic groups--Albanian, Serb, Turkish, Gypsies and others--have until the close of business Wednesday to register for the October municipal elections, said Daan Everts, head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s office here.

The deadline had been today.

OSCE spokesman Roland Bless said Everts met Thursday with Serbian representatives in the Serbian town of Gracanica and for the first time received “the strongest indication so far [that] some Serbs” might be interested in registering.

“It was decided to give them time to see whether those indications produce something tangible,” Bless said.

After the U.N. announcement, however, the official Yugoslav Tanjug News Agency quoted the hard-line Serb National Council as ruling out any possibility of Serbs taking part in registration and elections until Serbs who fled the province last year can return.

In Kosovska Mitrovica, the largest Serbian enclave, there was little sign that the Serbs would change their minds before the deadline.

“The Serbs from this region will not register or take part in the vote until Serbs start returning to Kosovo in bigger numbers,” said Dragisa Milovic, spokesman for community leader Oliver Ivanovic.

Assistant Secretary-General Hedi Annabi told the U.N. Security Council that nearly 900,000 applications have been received, virtually all from ethnic Albanians.