Kosovo says UN has failed on independence

PRISTINA, Serbia, July 17 (Reuters) The UN Security Council has failed on the issue of Kosovo, ethnic Albanian leaders said today, urging the West to offer the province an alternative route to independence from Serbia.

Russia yesterday rejected a third draft UN resolution on the province, a watered-down text that called for more Serb-Albanian talks but which Moscow said was still ''permeated with the concept of the independence of Kosovo.'' Leaders of the 90 percent Albanian majority have threatened to declare independence unilaterally, but want the support of the United States and European Union.

''The role of the UN Security Council has been weakened,'' Kosovo Albanian party leader and former guerrilla commander Hashim Thaci told reporters. ''It has failed to find a solution for Kosovo's status.'' Russia's 'No' was greeted with an air of inevitability in the Kosovo capital, Pristina. President Fatmir Sejdiu again called for an alternative route.

''If there is no solution through the U.N. Security Council -- a very quick solution -- alternative routes should be sought, but in cooperation with the international community.'' In Brussels, where EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana met UN Kosovo mediator Martti Ahtisaari, an EU official said it was possible Serb-Albanian talks would resume without a UN resolution, under the auspices of the six-power Contact Group of the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Russia.

Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO bombed to drive out Serb forces and halt the killing and expulsion of Albanians in a two-year war with guerrillas.

PARIS CONFERENCE? NATO powers leading 16,000 troops in the territory are warning of unrest, and the prospect of a general election in November is beginning to test political unity.

But Russia says there can be no solution without the consent of Serbia, which says Kosovo is sacred land and its secession would send shockwaves across the still-fragile Balkans.

In April, Ahtisaari proposed independence under the supervision of the European Union after 13 months of Serb-Albanian talks that ended in stalemate.

The latest draft resolution, the third to be circulated since May, called for 120 days of further talks and the deployment of an EU-led law and order mission to take over supervision of Kosovo from the United Nations.

Russia said it amounted to independence by stealth. Washington says Kosovo will be independent one way or another, but the 27-state EU fears being split by any unilateral moves.

The Kosovo daily Zeri said Western powers were considering an international conference on Kosovo in September in Paris.

Such a format would revive memories of the February 1999 Rambouillet peace talks that preceded NATO's 11-week bombing campaign to halt Serbia's counter-insurgency war.

Some Albanians warn Kosovo could face pressure to split the territory in two, ceding the mainly Serb north to Serbia as a possible way out of the deadlock.

REUTERS SKB KN1921