Serb-Albanian talks on Kosovo start UN endgame

Vienna, Mar 10: Serbian and ethnic Albanian leaders hold talks in Vienna today for what could be the last time before a UN plan offering the breakaway province of Kosovo independence goes to the UN Security Council.

The meeting between the Serbian leaders and their 'interim' counterparts in the UN-run southern Serbian province marks the culmination of one year of almost fruitless Serb-Albanian talks on the fate of the disputed territory.

Delegates will swap a stale Austrian conference centre, which hosted talks in February, for the austere Hofburg Palace, but their deadlocked positions are unlikely to change.

The UN plan's author, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, has conceded an agreed outcome is nearly impossible.

He wants to present the final document to UN headquarters by the end of March, eight years to the month since NATO forces went to war to wrest control of Kosovo from Serbia and halt the ethnic cleansing of its 90-percent Albanian population.

''If the expectations are realistic that the parties won't come up with anything that would merit a big revision to the paper -- I would expect that by the end of the week it would be transmitted to New York,'' a senior Western diplomat said.

Though it avoids the word independence, Ahtisaari's proposal sets out the framework for an independent state, under a foreign overseer, European Union police mission and NATO peace force. It offers self-government and protection for the remaining 1,00,000 Serbs.

Unveiled in February, the plan's limitations have won a frosty and at times violent reaction from some of Kosovo's 2 million Albanians. But their leaders have accepted it.

Serbia, with deep historic ties to Kosovo, has rejected the document outright, and promised to prevent its adoption at the UN Security Council with the help of fellow-Orthodox Christian nation and sometime ally Russia.

Belgrade has offered broad autonomy, but no Kosovo army or foreign ministry, and the return of some Serbian police. Russia says the solution should be acceptable to both sides, but has carefully avoided threatening the use of its UN veto.

''Let the Albanian majority rule Kosovo,'' Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic said yesterday. ''We just don't want our state borders moved.'' NATO intervened in 1999 with 11 weeks of NATO bombing to halt the killing and expulsion of Albanians in a two-year war between Albanian guerrillas and forces under Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serb strongman who died a year ago. Ten thousand Albanians were killed, and Western powers have all but conceded there is no going back.

They hope for a new UN resolution by June. NATO allies leading 16,500 troops in Kosovo fear further delay due to Russian opposition could spark widespread unrest.

Reuters