Kosovo appears to have passed its first test of democracy; free and fair elections. The first local elections conducted without United Nations supervision were held this week, in an absence of violence and tension between the country's ethnic rivals. Its declaration of independance last year has been recognised by 63 out of the 192 members of the UN. A sizeable portion of Kosovo's Serbian minority turned out, despite Belgrade's call to ignore the polls, to elect mayors and local officials. Election fraud has not occurred, according to monitors from the international community. Ten years after the conflict which ultimately created this European state, normalcy has set in.

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