Pristina - The Veteran pacifist leader, Mr Ibrahim Rugova, failed to win enough support in Kosovo's new legislature yesterday to be elected president of the Yugoslav province in a first round of voting.
Instead of the two-thirds majority needed, only 49 deputies in the 120-seat assembly backed Mr Rugova, who led passive resistance by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority to harsh Serb rule for a decade before war engulfed the province in 1999.
The assembly session, which follows on from Monday's inauguration of the vaunted multi-ethnic legislative body set up after a general election last month, ended after the vote and it was not clear when it would meet again.