EU and US suggest new path to Kosovan independence as Russia threatens veto

KOSOVO:The European Union and the United States now appear increasingly willing to accept that Kosovo might have to make a unilateral declaration of independence or even have to be divided along ethnic lines to resolve the deep diplomatic impasse over its future status.

Serbia refuses to relinquish ultimate control over a region that it considers to be its historic heartland, despite it now being home to a 90 per cent ethnic-Albanian majority that wants sovereignty eight years after the end of a brutal Serb crackdown on separatist rebels.

Russia has threatened to block any UN resolution granting independence to Kosovo against the wishes of Belgrade, which has flatly rejected a proposal by a UN envoy to give the region EU-supervised independence with broad autonomy for Serb enclaves.

A new resolution drawn up by Washington and major EU states suggests 120 more days for talks between Kosovo and Serb leaders, followed not by automatic independence - as was proposed in an earlier draft rejected by Belgrade and Russia - but rather a transition from UN control to administration by EU officials and police backed by Nato troops.

That would remove a key element of Kosovo's old, post-conflict status and install a major part of its planned "supervised independence" framework without forcing Russia to accept a UN resolution granting sovereignty to the province's two million people.

With EU political and security supervision in place, it would be easier for Kosovo to declare independence without UN Security Council backing.

Washington has said it would recognise an independent Kosovo if it ultimately made such a declaration.

Kosovo's leaders have said they will not wait indefinitely for a UN resolution, as frustration grows in the region over the intransigence of Russia and Serbia.

A sign of the West's frustration over Kosovo is the suggestion by some of its top diplomats that it may be even willing to accept the region's division along ethnic lines.

"Don't expect France to propose such reshaping," French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner told a Serb newspaper yesterday. "At the very least, Belgrade and Pristina would have to agree on it. And in that case I don't see how France could oppose it."

He also told Serbia it could not hope to defy a Western plan to give Kosovo independence and still expect to join the European Union.

"You are going to join the EU," Mr Kouchner told Serb reporters in Belgrade.

"But when I say that, don't think that it is going to be before Kosovo is resolved peacefully," he said after meeting his Serbian counterpart, Vuk Jeremic.

"It is not possible to enter the EU with ethnic conflict," added Mr Kouchner, who was himself United Nations governor of Kosovo from 1999 to 2001.

Earlier this week, British ambassador to Serbia Steven Wordsworth told a Serb news agency that he thought partition was a bad idea.

But he added: "If in the process of talks the two sides agree on that, that would change things."