Serbia's president said on Monday that Serbs in the new state of Kosovo should participate in local Serbian elections next month, but Britain and the United States said this would be unwise and illegal.
Serbia, which says it will never recognize Kosovo's February 17 declaration of independence from Belgrade, will hold local and parliamentary elections on May 11.
The United Nations, which has administered Kosovo since 1999, says the participation of Kosovo Serbs in Serbia's local elections would violate U.N. rules and would not be valid.
But in the written text of remarks prepared for delivery at a Security Council briefing on Kosovo, Serbian President Boris Tadic said it was vital for Kosovo Serbs to be able to vote in the local elections. The population of Kosovo's north is predominantly Serbian.
"We believe it is important that everywhere in Kosovo, where (Serb) citizens recognize the Republic of Serbia as their state, they choose in a democratic way their own municipal, as well as parliamentary, representatives," Tadic said.
The U.N. mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has indicated it did not object to Kosovo Serbs voting in the parliamentary election as they have done before, but Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders say local polls were a threat to the sovereignty of the new state.
Officially, UNMIK remains in control of Kosovo.
British Ambassador to the United Nations, John Sawers, told reporters the U.N. administrator of Kosovo, Joachim Ruecker of Germany, reported to the council that he opposed the holding of Serbian local elections in Kosovo.
"His judgment is that elections now, especially elections on an ethnic basis, would be divisive and unhelpful," Sawers said. "We look to Serbia to reverse its decision to try to hold these ethnically based elections inside Kosovo."
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