Kosovo Independence Debate Stirs Tensions

Kosovo's prime minister vowed Thursday to declare independence unilaterally if internationally brokered talks do not "open a way for us," staking out a tough position as the latest round of negotiations began in Vienna.

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership and Serbia's government remain bitterly divided on the future status of the province, and officials said a breakthrough was unlikely.

The breakaway province's majority Albanians refuse to budge from their demands for full independence from Serbia, and the Serbs are insistent on retaining Kosovo as part of their territory.

That deadlock raises the likelihood of a dramatic showdown in December, when 120 days of last-ditch negotiations called by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expire -- and the international community is confronted with the possibility that Kosovo's Albanians will make a play for statehood on their own.

Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku told The Associated Press: "No more delay. We cannot afford further uncertainty. We need a decision."

Ceku said he would press for the talks to "open a way for us to declare independence." If that doesn't happen, he said, "we have to declare, and we are going to ask the international community to recognize us."

But Serbia's minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, said his delegation would offer only "essential autonomy," and Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica urged the world not to allow Kosovo to break away.

"The Serbian government will annul any act of unilateral independence," Kostunica warned in Belgrade.

Veton Surroi, a member of the Albanian delegation, described Thursday's talks as "fruitful" but underscored the growing impatience among Albanians, who account for 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people and expect independence by year's end.

"We cannot endlessly go on from one process to another," he said. "We're speaking not about the past. We're speaking about the future."

Although Kosovo remains formally part of Serbia, it has been run by the U.N. and NATO since 1999, when NATO air strikes ended a Serbian military crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in the southern province.

A draft U.N. plan would have given Kosovo internationally supervised statehood. But Serbia bitterly opposed it, and Russia sided with Belgrade, effectively blocking its approval by the U.N. Security Council.

The latest attempt to get the two sides to agree is being brokered by the Contact Group, which includes the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

"It's wrong to expect that revolutionary ideas will immediately emerge" from Thursday's closed-door session at the Austrian Foreign Ministry, said Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, the Russian member of the so-called "troika" supervising negotiations along with U.S. and European Union envoys.

The troika diplomats, who also include U.S. diplomat Frank Wisner and EU representative Wolfgang Ischinger, were meeting first with the ethnic Albanian delegation and then with the Serbian contingent.

A flurry of similar talks is expected in the next few months as envoys shuttle between Belgrade and Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital, trying to reconcile the two sides.

In his statement to the troika, Ceku warned against carving up Kosovo along ethnic lines.

"Everyone has agreed on the damage that would be caused by partition," Ceku said.

Ceku said despite the Albanians' insistence on independence, "we are equally committed to building working relationships with our neighbors. We want to treat Serbia as an equal partner."

On Wednesday, Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu urged Serbia to forever relinquish its claim to the province and said he, too, doubts the talks will yield progress before the troika reports back to U.N. headquarters on Dec. 10.

With tensions rising on both sides, the turbulent region could see renewed violence if Kosovo does not gain supervised independence, a leading think tank warned the EU earlier this month.

"With Kosovo Albanians increasingly restive and likely soon to declare unilateral independence in the absence of a credible alternative, Europe risks a new bloody and destabilizing conflict," the International Crisis Group said, urging the EU "to avoid chaos on its doorstep."