Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Kosovo Albanians are lining up to vote en masse for backers of independence from Serbia, escalating the great-power confrontation over influence in southeast Europe.

Whoever wins Kosovo's Nov. 17 parliamentary election will push for statehood -- and count on the U.S. to overcome Russian objections. Both parties leading in opinion polls, the Democratic Party of Kosovo and the Democratic League of Kosovo, are calling for immediate independence.

Russia has chafed at American clout in the Balkans since NATO's air war drove the Serb army out of Kosovo in 1999, and the increasingly assertive President Vladimir Putin has turned the talks over independence for the province into an East-West battle of wills.

Russia is ``defending a principle of law,'' Putin said last month. ``Why inflame these tendencies of separatism?''

Officially part of Serbia with an Albanian ethnic majority, Kosovo has been run as a United Nations protectorate since the war, supervised by a European diplomat and policed by 16,000 North Atlantic Treaty Organization peacekeepers.

A historic ally of Serbia, Russia blocked an independence resolution in the UN Security Council, forcing a new round of status talks between Kosovo and Serb leaders that face a Dec. 10 deadline.

Guerrilla Leader

The front-runner in the polls, the Democratic Party of Kosovo, is led by Hashim Thaci, 39, a former leader of the guerrilla force that fought against Serbia in the 1990s.

Thaci's party picked up 31 percent support in an Oct. 25-31 poll by Pristina-based Index Kosova, just ahead of the 29 percent of President Fatmir Sejdiu's Democratic League of Kosovo. The survey of 1,003 potential voters had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Independent Prime Minister Agim Ceku, 43, himself a former guerrilla commander, isn't running for re-election.

Ethnic Albanians make up 90 percent of Kosovo's population of 2 million, with the Serb population down to an estimated 100,000, scattered along the province's northern and eastern borders with Serbia.

`Pursue Independence'

``I'll be voting for an independent Kosovo, that's the essence,'' said Gzim Maloku, 40, from the capital Pristina in a phone interview. ``My political preferences really don't matter. Whoever wins, any new coalition, everyone will have to listen to the people and pursue independence.''

Polls open at 7 a.m. tomorrow and will stay open until 7 p.m. unless there are still people waiting to vote, said Sven Lindholm, a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The OSCE, which is overseeing the election with Central Election Commission in Kosovo, will report during the day on how the vote is proceeding. An initial exit poll is expected from Democracy in Action after the polls close and preliminary results are expected by Nov. 19, according to Lindholm.

As many as 24,000 domestic observers will be monitoring the election, with as many as 250 delegates from the Council of Europe also present, Lindholm said. The NATO-led Kosovo force will be on patrol to prevent any disturbances, including riots, NATO said this week.

`Enough is Enough'

President George W. Bush narrowed his diplomatic options in June when he said in neighboring Albania that ``sooner rather than later, you've got to say enough is enough: Kosovo is independent.''

That pronouncement emboldened Kosovo's political class, spurring expectations that the new government will make a unilateral declaration of independence unless Serbia sets it free by the Dec. 10 deadline. A clock counting down the hours to Dec. 10 has been set up in the main square in Pristina.

European governments are divided over whether to recognize a unilateral breakaway, with countries such as Spain, Slovakia, Romania and Cyprus worried about agitation by minorities within their own borders.

``If things were to go badly for Kosovo, the price would not be paid by Russia or the U.S. but Europe,'' EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn told a Helsinki press conference today.

Serbia fought other Yugoslav republics in the civil wars of the 1990s, and is holding on to Kosovo as the cradle of Serb civilization. President Boris Tadic's government has called on the province's Serbs to boycott the election.

`Change Nothing'

``I will not vote,'' said Milivoje Djuric, 49, from Kosovo's predominantly Serb town of Zubin Potok, in a phone interview. ``This vote will change nothing for Kosovo Serbs.''

Djuric, like Maloku in Pristina, is among the 45 percent of the labor force officially registered as unemployed in an economy that remains dependent on foreign aid.

Foreign donors have pumped in 2 billion euros ($2.93 billion) since 1999. Economic growth weakened to 1.5 percent in 2005 from 21.2 percent in 2000, according to the World Bank; the European Commission says growth rose to 3.8 percent in 2006.

To contact the reporter on this story: Aleksandra Nenadovic in Belgrade This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; James G. Neuger in Brussels at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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