UN to Decide Kosovo Future After Talks Fail

Serbian and ethnic Albanian leaders ended a year of fruitless negotiations over Kosovo at the weekend, meaning that the dispute over what becomes of the province in the southern Balkans will be decided by the UN security council.

A summit meeting of Serbian government leaders and of the provisional Albanian government of Kosovo met in Vienna for the final round of talks on the settlement plan drafted by the special UN envoy, Martti Ahtisaari.

The 58-page plan to put Kosovo on the path to independent statehood while entrenching far-reaching rights of self government for the Serbian minority in Kosovo was rejected by the Belgrade government and generally accepted by the Kosovo Albanian leadership.

Mr Ahtisaari said there was no chance of the two sides reaching a compromise and that he would take his plan to the security council by the end of the month. Britain, a supporter of Kosovo independence and chair of the security council next month, will try to engineer a resolution that imposes conditional independence on Kosovo against the will of Serbia.

Kosovo, said the ethnic Albanian president of the province, Fatmir Sejdiu, looked forward "to joining the family of free nations". The deadlock paves the way for a difficult debate in New York, with Russia and China against creating a new country. Western diplomats hope the issue will be settled by June, triggering a Kosovo declaration of independence which would be recognised by the US and the EU.