Serbian Prime Minister Mr Vojislav Kostunica said today his government was drafting a proposal for autonomy to protect minority Serbs in Kosovo, but ruled out partition of the United Nations-run province.
Kosovo's unresolved final status is the subject of bitter dispute between Albanians demanding outright independence and Serbs who say it should have autonomy but within Serbia and Montenegro, to which it legally belongs.
In an interview with the daily Politika, Mr Kostunica said his coalition would soon come out very "firmly, persuasively and decisively" with a solution that would ensure more safety for Kosovo Serbs and return of the displaced.
Clashes between Kosovo Albanians and Serbs last month left a score of dead, hundreds injured and 3,600 Serbs displaced in the worst violence in the province since the UN and NATO took over in June 1999.
The mob attacks and arson, blamed by NATO on Albanian extremists bent on driving Serbs out of Kosovo, dealt a setback to Western hopes of bridging the ethnic divide.
Mr Kostunica said standards for democracy set out by the United Nations for Kosovo had to be adapted to its realities. Roughly a third of its remaining population of up to 100,000 Serbs lives in isolated enclaves among the two million Albanian majority.
"Whatever we call it - decentralisation, cantonisation, it does not matter - Serbs in Kosovo must be given some kind of autonomy," Mr Kostunica said in the interview.
Kosovo has been ruled by the United Nations since NATO'S 1999 bombing campaign to end Serb repression of Albanians. Some 220,000 Serbs fled to avoid Albanian revenge attacks that followed NATO occupation of the province.