PRISTINA, Serbia (AFP) — Former Kosovo guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci, whose party favours speedy independence, claimed victory Sunday after crucial parliamentary elections in the disputed Serbian province.
"I thank all of those who helped our victory and the victory of Kosovo," Thaci told a celebration of his Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), which an unofficial tally showed had won 35 percent of Saturday's vote.
"The citizens of Kosovo sent the world a message that we are a democratic country ready to join the European family. The strongest message was that Kosovo is ready (for) independence," he told thousands of cheering supporters.
"My government will be the address for solving all the problems of this society. I begin my mission from tonight," said the 39-year-old former leader of the political wing of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
"I promise that I will be a prime minister for all citizens and that I will work for the benefit of all citizens of Kosovo."
Results compiled by independent poll observers Democracy In Action had earlier showed the ruling Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) of President Fatmir Sejdiu trailed the PDK with 23 percent of the vote.
The group, a coalition of 10 non-governmental organisations involved in the official count, said the margin of error was one percent after 70 percent of ballots were counted.
Kosovo's parliamentary elections were held less than a month before the conclusion of internationally mediated talks to determine a new status for the disputed province.
A new round of the so-far deadlocked negotiations between leaders of Kosovo's 90-percent Albanian population and Serbia is to be held in Brussels in three days. They must be completed by December 10.
"Immediately after December 10, we will take decisions to make Kosovo an independent and sovereign country," Thaci told AFP ahead of the polls, also called to elect mayors and local councillors.
While likely to be short of an outright majority, Thaci is tipped to head a broad coalition government.
Hailing from Drenica, a central hotbed of separatism, Thaci became a student activist during the years of passive resistance to Belgrade's rule in the 1990s.
Thaci walked away from the pacifist approach of late president Ibrahim Rugova and joined the KLA. At the end of the war, he helped to establish the PDK and has since sought to reshape his image as a more moderate leader.
He would replace Agim Ceku, a former KLA commander who did not stand in the elections.
The elections were massively boycotted by Serbs fiercely opposed to independence.
Braving icy weather and fears of renewed violence, Albanians turned out with optimism for independence following years in limbo under the management of the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).
Legally still a Serbian province, Kosovo has been run by the UN since NATO's 1999 air war ended a months-long conflict that killed an estimated 10,000 Albanians and displaced hundreds of thousands.
Fearing reprisal attacks, around two-thirds of its pre-war Serb population has since fled into Serbia proper. Most of the 100,000 Serbs who have remained in Kosovo heeded Belgrade's call for them to boycott the polls.
Belgrade and Serb nationalists fiercely oppose independence for Kosovo, which they consider the cradle of their nation's history, culture and religion.
"Serbs are not voting in order to avoid giving legitimacy to elections organised by the provisional institutions in Kosovo," the party of Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told Beta news agency in reference to Kosovo's parliament.
NATO's 16,000 peacekeepers were bolstered by hundreds of reinforcements before the polls involving 1.5 million voters.
The elections for places in the 120-seat assembly were largely peaceful in spite of fears of violence and several incidents just before polling stations opened.
Some 150 Council of Europe observers and 25,000 local monitors watched the polls, which UNMIK chief Joachim Ruecker praised as showing Kosovo's "maturity."
According to the estimates based on a count of more than 2,300 booths located across Kosovo, voter turnout in Saturday's elections was a lowly 45 percent, compared with 51 percent in 2004.
The first official results in the third general elections since Kosovo's 1998-1999 war are expected early next week.
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