Int'l envoys lead fresh Kosovo talks
AFP, Belgrade
Three international mediators arrived in Belgrade yesterday to open talks with Serbian leaders in the latest bid to broker a deal on the future status of the UN-administered Kosovo province. Upon their arrival, the envoys from the United States, the European Union and Russia met Serbian President Boris Tadic, Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, as well other top officials in charge of the issue. After Belgrade, the three mediators -- Wolfgang Ischinger representing the EU, US diplomat Frank Wisner and Russian official Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko -- will travel to the Kosovo capital Pristina, for talks with the UN and Kosovo Albanian leadership of the province. Kosovo Albanian Prime Minister Agim Ceku told reporters that "this is the last delay of the Kosovo status." "This is an unnecessary delay... We are firm not to move from our positions," said Ceku. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, who make up more than 90 percent of Kosovo's 1.8 million population, want nothing short of independence, favouring the adoption of UN envoy's Martti Ahtisaari's plan backed by the United States and most Western countries. Before the troika's first trip to the region, EU envoy Ischinger told the BBC that the diplomats "are offering Belgrade and Pristina another opportunity, maybe the last opportunity, to work out a negotiated solution." "If there's success, it will be their success. If there's failure, it will be their failure," he said, adding that any outcome of discussions between Belgrade and Pristina "will be acceptable to us." Serbia, backed by its main supporter on the UN Security Council, veto-yielding Russia, has rejected Ahtisaari's plan that called for the internationally-supervised independence of its southern province. Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said Belgrade was ready to give Kosovo "the widest possible autonomy in the world," but warned that Kosovo Albanians should also give up some of their independence demands. Faced with the threat of a Russian veto on the issue, the 15-member Security Council decided to hand back the issue to the Contact Group, comprising the US, Britain, Italy, France, Germany and Russia. For Washington and the European Union, the basis for new talks should be Ahtisaari's plan, while Moscow warned the UN envoy's proposal has not been "set in stone." The Contact Group has also opted for so-called "shuttle diplomacy" between Belgrade and Pristina, but Serbia has insisted on "direct talks." The last remaining chapter in a bloody dissolution of the former Yugoslavia in a series of 1990s Balkan wars, Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since 1999, when Nato bombing ended a Serbian crackdown on the Kosovo Albanian separatist movement.
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