Kosovo votes amid pressure to reboot Serbia talks

PRISTINA: Kosovo voted Sunday for new leaders who will be under pressure to tackle corruption at home and resolve lingering tensions with former war foe Serbia, a nagging source of instability in Europe. A decade after it declared independence from Serbia, former province Kosovo is still struggling for full recognition on the world stage. Belgrade denies its independence and Brussels has been unable to get the neighbours to make progress in talks to resolve their conflict.

The West is hoping Sunday´s poll will offer a chance to re-energise the deadlocked dialogue. But Kosovo´s 1.9 million electorate is far more concerned with issues like high unemployment, widespread graft and poor healthcare. “We need freedom, a state governed by the rule of law, prosperity,” voter Mentor Nimani, 47, told AFP in Pristina shortly after casting his ballot. “I would like to have more social stability, employment,” and better “basic primary services like healthcare and education,” added Fat Limani, a 30-something voter in the capital. For the past decade Kosovo has been dominated by members of the guerrilla forces who waged an insurgency against Serbian repression in the late 1990s — a war that cost 13,000 lives, mostly Kosovo Albanians. Sunday´s snap poll was called after then-Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerilla commander, resigned in July to face questioning by a special court in The Hague investigating war crimes from that era.

Opposition parties hope to block him and other ex-fighters from regaining power by harnessing frustration with the graft and poverty that have blighted Kosovo´s first decade of independence. Analysts say two opposition camps — the centre-right LDK and the leftist, nationalist Vetevendosje — have a shot at coming out on top.