THE priest’s gold-filled mouth flashed a smile as he described how he had kept the rioters away.

“I hid behind the flowers in my garden and used a battery radio to imitate the sound of a police siren,” Dragoljub Stevanovic, 69, said as he stood outside his church on the eve of the second general election since Kosovo came under United Nations rule in 1999. “It kept the rioters away until the American troops arrived.”

The St Nikola Serbian Orthodox Church in Kamenica escaped lightly during the riots that ripped across the Serbian province this year. The church was left unscathed, but elsewhere in Kosovo at least 19 people died and hundreds were injured as Albanian mobs attacked Serb communities and razed Serbian churches. Thousands of Serbs fled their homes.

Fearing a resurgence in violence to coincide with the elections today, Nato has deployed an extra 2,000 troops to strengthen its peacekeeping force of 18,000.

Yet Kamenica is like no other place in Kosovo. Whereas most other Serb communities in Kosovo live in fear, protected by barbed wire and Nato troops, here the Serbs mingle freely with neighbouring Albanians. They even work together, which is almost unthinkable anywhere else in Kosovo.

Mustafe Borovci, an Albanian, owns the local brick factory, employing Serbs and Albanians in equal numbers. “I make one rule when people come to work here,” he said. “When you enter the factory gate, politics is left behind.”

It was a condition of him taking the plant that both communities were equally represented. “The Serbs and Albanians get along fine. I’ve not had any problems. There was not a lot of fighting here during the war. I think that is one of the reasons why people get on.”

It is a story that the international community is desperate to repeat across the province, but which seems increasingly unlikely in a region polarised by ethnic divisions.

The elections for the 120-seat Assembly are the second since Serb security forces were thrown out of the province after a 78-day Nato bombing campaign in 1999.

This election’s central issue is the future status of the province. Five years on from the bombing, there is a deep frustration among Albanians, who make up more than 90 per cent of the population, that independence still has not been achieved. All the main Albanian parties want to see the process quickened up and the relatively toothless Assembly given more powers.

Kosovo is administered by the UN, but remains technically a part of Serbia and Montenegro. Serbs want it to stay that way. The riots in March were seen as a wake-up call for the international community to press on with final status talks.

Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian Prime Minister, has called on Serbs in Kosovo to boycott the ballot because of concerns over security and a failure by the international community to adopt a decentralisation plan proposed by Belgrade for the future administration of the region.

But the Serb community in Kosovo remains split on whether to take part in the vote. Some Serb parties have decided to do so.

The UN Mission to Kosovo is taking precautions, deploying additional police patrols in Serb areas to stop those boycotting the poll from preventing others who want to vote.

The UN is due to review the status of Kosovo next year and final status talks may take place after that.

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