"The United Nations and international community promised a free Kosovo... to which everyone could return. This has not happened. We will wait with dignity, but there is an end to our patience," he said.

A man yelling for an   Independent Kosovo, walks   in protest at a recent rally.

Speaking to a crowd of around 1,000 people waving KLA flags and banners demanding the return of ethnic Albanians allegedly held in Serbia, he also promised press freedom and to "respect the rights of everybody."

The roads into Orahovac, which were hit hard by the conflict, are blockaded by ethnic Albanians refusing to allow the deployment of Russian peacekeeping troops, accusing Moscow of having sympathies with Belgrade.

Thaci, who is now head of Kosovo's de facto government in Kosovo, also pledged full employment and the refusal of any divide of the Serbian province between ethnic Albanian and Serbian communities.

He was speaking a day after his rival for the Kosovo leadership, pacifist independence veteran Ibrahim Rugova, made his first public appearance on the recently opened ethnic Albanian Kosovo television.

Rugova said his party, the Democratic League for Kosovo (LDK) and Thaci, who recently founded his own party, the PPDK, was "working for the same goal but by different methods." "This is natural in a pluralist society," Rugova said.

Kosovo's first elections since the arrival of international peacekeeping troops in June are expected to take place next April.

Opinion in the crowd that turned out to see Thaci was divided. "I'll vote for Thaci for an independent Kosovo," said Albanian teacher Zenel Hote, 45. "If I wanted a Kosovo that is part of Yugoslavia I'd vote for Rugova. What a failure."

Nasibe Mushaba, 39, a housewife, said she liked both candidates but since she saw Rugova so rarely in public she would probably vote for Thaci.

But Nuhe Vuquterna, a 56-year-old farmer, said Rugova -- who was twice voted "president" in unofficial referendums before NATO's campaign to drive Serbian troops out of Kosovo -- should eventually take the top job.

"No one has contributed more to this country. No one can match him," he said. Rugova had left Kosovo for Italy and Germany during NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia aimed at forcing Belgrade to halt its crackdown on the province's majority ethnic Albanian population.

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