KOSOVO SERB LEADER SAYS HIS PARTY WON'T PARTICIPATE IN NOV. 17 VOTE

PRISTINA, Oct 13 (Hina) - The president of the Democratic Party of Serbia in Kosovo, Marko Jaksic, announced at a protest rally in Kosovska Mitrovica on Saturday his party would not take part in the province's November election until the international community met its conditions, the Kosovo media reported. "We will not participate in the elections until our conditions to the international community are met, and this is the stand of the Serb people and our state," Jaksic said. Serbian politicians must not change their stand about the Kosovo election regardless of their motives, claims Jaksic. In this context, he condemned the conduct of Rade Trajkovic, the Serb representative in the UN Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK), because, he said, Trajkovic was on the UNMIK payroll. Jaksic criticised Local Administration Minister Vladan Batic for "having released terrorist and the Mujaheddeen from Serbian prisons without having solved the status of Serb prisoners at the Mitrovica prison," the Kosovo Serb media reported. According to the same source, close to 5,000 Serbs from northern Kosovo said they would boycott the November 17 general vote. They claim that by participating in the vote they would legalise another Albanian state and their own expulsion. (hina) rml