Serbs and Albanians await UN plan for Kosovo

BELGRADE, Feb 2 (Reuters) United Nations special envoy Martti Ahtisaari will hand over his plan for the future of Kosovo today to Serb authorities braced for proposals that will set the breakaway province on a path to independence.

Ahtisaari will also present his plan in Kosovo's capital Pristina, where Albanian leaders know they are to be offered something short of independence at first, coupled with more years of international supervision by a European Union mission.

United Nations armoured personnel carriers moved around Pristina early in the morning, preparing to seal off the centre for the envoy's visit.

The former Finnish president, who mediated months of largely fruitless talks in 2006 in search of a compromise between Serbia and leaders of Kosovo's 90 percent Albanian majority, will meet Serb President Boris Tadic but not Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.

Kostunica, who has taken the lead in rejecting Ahtisaari's plan in advance, says he cannot receive the envoy because, following an inconclusive general election on January 21, he is merely a caretaker leader.

He has condemned Ahtisaari for ''anti-Serb bias'' and his gesture is clearly understood here as a public snub.

A sombre reception was likely for a plan that some Serbs say will be an ''imposed'' settlement which could provoke violence in the divided province where 100,000 Serbs live in enclaves.

''The question of the future status of Kosovo is the most important issue of state,'' Tadic's Democratic Party said.

''It is in the interests of our citizens and our struggle to preserve our sovereignty that this issue be approached with all the seriousness it deserves,'' it said, in an attack on Kostunica for making Kosovo and the Ahtisaari visit a political football.

A summary of Ahtisaari's plan seen by Reuters confirms that Ahtisaari will avoid recommending independence by name, and will not refer to Serbian sovereignty, which Belgrade insists the United Nations cannot violate by amputating Kosovo.

It will, however, make clear that Kosovo will not return to Serbian rule and will obtain legal status that permits other countries to eventually recognise it as an independent state.

''Passage of a (UN) resolution would create a platform for Kosovo to declare independence and those countries minded to do so would recognise that,'' said a Western diplomat.

''The Serbs would have to accept the loss of Kosovo, the Kosovars would have to accept a continued international presence, significant limitations on their sovereignty and a very generous package of rights for the Kosovo Serbs...'' CLOSE EMBASSIES Kosovo has been run by the UN since 1999 when 11 weeks of bombing by NATO forced the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his forces, accused of killing 10,000 Albanians during a counter-insurgency war.

The poor, landlocked province of two million, about the size of Cyprus or Jamaica, is cherished by Serbia for its cultural and religious heritage as the medieval homeland of the nation.

Serbian president Tadic has warned Serbs that, whatever appeals and arguments their country makes, it may be no longer possible to prevent the loss of Kosovo. But Kostunica has vowed never to accept this, saying Belgrade should sever ties with any country that recognises the province as an independent state.

That could mean closing Serbia's embassies in Washington, London, Paris, Rome and other Western capitals.

The United States embassy in Belgrade yesterday issued a statement saying it was ''very disappointed'' that Kostunica, once labelled a moderate nationalist, was insisting that any party hoping to join him in coalition must swear to do as he proposes.

Tadic's party said Kostunica was trying to impose conditions that were detrimental to the country.

Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer by profession, says he is trusting to Serbia's friends in the Kremlin to block Kosovo independence by insisting on the law of sovereignty.

Ahtisaari intends to hold a limited round of talks with Serbs and Kosovo Albanians in Vienna in the coming weeks before the United Nations takes up his proposals formally.

But Kostunica says Serbia will not participate.

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