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Posted on 11/16/2001 1:14:20 PM PST by HAL9000

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Nov 14 (AFP) - Ibrahim Rugova, the moderate ethnic Albanian leader tipped to become president of Kosovo, on Wednesday wound up his campaign for this week's legislative elections with a new call for independence for the UN-administered Yugoslav province.

Hours later an explosion, believed to have been caused by a hand grenade, was heard outside a building where a Serb political meeting was taking place in the north of the predominantly ethnic Albanian province. The blast damaged two cars but caused no casualties.

"We want independence recognised as soon as possible because it is a national objective of Kosovo and of the LDK," Rugova told several thousand supporters who gathered in a football stadium in the Kosovo capital of Pristina to hear the leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK).

The crowd, braving freezing rain, waved flags reading "liberty, independence, democracy" and chanted "Rugova, Rugova".

The LDK is predicted to win the most seats in Saturday's election for a 120-member parliament, which is to run the Yugoslav province for three years, but which will remain under the ultimate authority of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

The parliament is to elect a president, widely tipped to be Rugova, who would then nominate a prime minister.

The LDK has campaigned on a pro-independence platform, as have the two other main ethnic Albanian parties.

But UNMIK chief Hans Haekkerup has emphasised that the future Albanian-dominated parliament can never unilaterally declare independence, a fear of many minority Serbs, as he will not allow it to be put on the assembly's agenda.

"Once more, this election is not about independence," UNMIK spokesman Simon Haselock said on Wednesday. "It is about provisional self-government and substantial autonomy as written in UN Resolution 1244.

"It is important the elected assembly and the government formed as a consequence deals with the issues and concerns that are within their competence, and independence certainly is not," he said.

UN Security Council resolution 1244 of June 1999 authorised "substantial autonomy" for the province in southern Serbia, the dominant republic in the Yugoslav federation, and the deployment of a NATO-led peacekeeping force, KFOR.

The resolution followed an 11-week NATO bombing campaign that ended a crackdown on ethnic Albanians by then Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.

"Two and a half years after the war, we have made great progress in Kosovo, thanks to the collaboration with KFOR and UNMIK," said Rugova, a French-educated writer and professor of Albanian literature.

Later Wednesday, an explosion damaged two vehicles outside a municipal building in the northern Kosovo town of Zvecan. An UNMIK spokesman in Pristina, Andrea Angeli, said the blast was believed to have been caused by a hand grenade.

About 50 people, including candidates, political activists and journalists, were seen in the building attending a meeting of the Coalition for Return, the only Serb political grouping to participate in the election.

It was not clear who was responsible for the blast.

Kosovo remains deeply divided between the ethnic Albanians, who form the overwhelming majority and who want to sever links with Belgrade, and the Serbs, who make up about five percent of the population of two million and who prefer to remain under Belgrade's authority.

Belgrade and many Kosovo Serb leaders have urged a boycott of the vote, demanding that the UN improve security and living conditions for Serbs and aid the return of refugees. However, under international pressure Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica earlier this month appealed to the Serbs to vote.

Almost 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians have fled the province since government forces were replaced by KFOR, fearing reprisal attacks by ethnic Albanians. Most of the Serbs who remain -- between 80,000 to 100,000 people -- now live in NATO-guarded enclaves for their safety.

Around 175,000 non-Albanians are registered to vote -- some 70,000 in Kosovo and about 105,000 refugees in the rest of Serbia and in Montenegro -- compared to more than one million ethnic Albanians.

Ten of the seats are reserved for Serbs and another 10 for other minorities and analysts say Serbs could potentially pick up as many as 25 of the 120 seats at stake.

This could leave them as the second or third largest party after the election, which is being organised by the pan-European Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The Serbs boycotted municipal polls in Kosovo in October last year, the first under UN administration in the province.

The LDK took 58 percent of the vote in that poll, far more than radical parties led by former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the rebel force that fought Milosevic's control of the province but which has now been officially demilitarised.

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