Serbia votes on constitution under Kosovo shadow

BELGRADE, Oct 28 (Reuters) Serbs began voting today in a two-day referendum on a new constitution that declares the breakaway province of Kosovo to be forever part of Serbia.

The ballot is Serbia's first attempt to replace a 1990 constitution adopted under late President Slobodan Milosevic.

The referendum needs 50 per cent of the 6.6 million electorate to vote ''Yes'' to pass.

An opinion poll this week showed 49 per cent of respondents planned to vote, although many suspected the new constitution -- a product of political horse-trading never put to public debate -- would change little and have no impact on Kosovo's fate.

Diplomats say the West will most likely give Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority the independence they want and have de facto enjoyed since NATO bombing in 1999 drove out Serb forces that Milosevic had sent to put down a separatist rebellion. The province has been run by the United Nations since.

Its 100,000 remaining Serbs will vote in their enclaves, but the two million Albanians are not registered and were ignoring the vote in any case.

''With this constitution we wanted to say ... we want Kosovo to remain part of Serbia forever,'' said pensioner Sveto Dimitrijevic, voting in the Serb monastery town of Gracanica just south of Kosovo's capital, Pristina.

''I don't know what the world is thinking when it comes to Kosovo, but they certainly don't know its history.'' ''SOFT CONSTITUTION'' Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica campaigned hard to sell the constitution to voters more concerned Serbia is now last in the Balkan queue to join the European Union, because of its failure to arrest Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic.

The Kosovo clause is the most talked about part of what one senior Western diplomat called a ''soft constitution'', written in general terms and requiring the addition of a hard body of laws.

Critics say it is vague on minority rights and its definition of Serbia as the ''country of the Serbs and others'' is more nationalist than the Milosevic constitution.

If it passes, Kostunica is expected to call an early general election, probably in December, to seek a second term with a stronger majority of pro-Western democrats able to ward off the constant challenge from ultranationalists in parliament.

Coupled with better EU prospects, that might ease Serbia's acquiescence in a Kosovo decision that goes against its wishes.

But the referendum's failure would have ''bleak and unforeseeable consequences'', Kostunica has warned. In a rare show of unity, President Boris Tadic of the opposition Democrats said Serbia ''would enter months, maybe years, of uncertainty''.

REUTERS DKB RN1529