THE situation in Kosovo is still volatile according to a Craven women who has been helping to co-ordinate elections there.

Antonia Young, from Hetton, has just returned from the war-torn province of the former Yugoslavia where she ran a polling station in the village of Prizen as part of the province's municipal elections - its equivalent to council elections.

Antonia was one of a party of 1,200 people from all over the world who volunteered to help with the organisation of the election. She was working for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which has members in 55 countries.

"The UK volunteers are sponsored by the Government and are given tasks to carry out when they arrive in Kosovo," she said. "I was supervising a polling station, which basically meant I was running it.

"This is the first municipal elections the area has had since 1992. We were supported by around 4,000 armed K4 international troops."

Although Antonia's work at the polling station passed without incident, she did hear of a number of security scares involving fellow volunteers.

"One polling station was 200 metres from where some children had discovered a batch of land mines," she added.

"But the K4 troops didn't believe them until they picked up one of the mines and brought it to them. They then had to evacuate the polling station and detonate the mines. There was an almighty explosion but the Albanians didn't bat and eyelid, because they are used to it."

The Democratic Alliance of Kosovo won 60 per cent of the seats in almost 30 municipalities in the province.

Antonia said this organisation had been going for about 12 years and urged the Albanians not to use violence against their Serb oppressors.

"Half the Albanian male population in Kosovo had been arrested for just talking to each other in the street," she said.

Ironically, Albanians are also unhappy about the result of the recent presidential election which saw dictator Slobodan Milosevic overthrown.

"You'd think that they'd be pleased, but the new man is just as right wing as Milosevic and they feel that the media will start to focus on Serbia and forget about Kosovo."