New bid to break Kosovo stalemate as deadline nears

[Marulus]

New bid to break Kosovo stalemate as deadline nears

Mon Nov 19, 2007

By Mark John

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders will meet on Tuesday to try to reach a compromise over the breakaway Serb province of Kosovo as a December 10 deadline for a deal draws near.

While few expect a breakthrough after months of fruitless wrangling, Western capitals want all options to be explored before leaders of the province's majority Albanians press ahead with an independence push. "We feel that no stone must go unturned," said France's Europe Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet ahead of talks in Brussels between the two sides, due to be shepherded by a "troika" of EU, U.S. and Russian mediators.

"Regardless of how exactly this process will end ... it is clear no one will be able to say that this was not a meaningful and intense and working negotiating process," said Wolfgang Ischinger, the German diplomat leading the negotiations.

Serbia has offered broad autonomy for the 90 percent ethnic Albanian province, whose leaders say nothing short of full independence will do.

Beyond Tuesday, another two "troika" meetings with Serb and Kosovo Albanian leaders are scheduled. Serbia rejects the December 10 date as an artificial deadline and says it has discouraged the Kosovo Albanians from entering into serious talks.

Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado said Ischinger would look to float a so-called "status-neutral" proposal to regulate ties between Pristina and Belgrade without pre-judging any future move to decide Kosovo's final status.

The idea has its origins in a 1972 pact that normalized ties between West and East Germany without prejudging the question of unification, which only happened 18 years later after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.

But some diplomats argue Serbia and Russia would only agree to such a pact if EU capitals in return gave guarantees that they would not recognize Kosovo independence in the meantime -- something most European countries would not be willing to do.

The United States backs Kosovo independence and British Europe Minister Jim Murphy said "well over 20" of the bloc's 27 states agreed, without naming those who were reluctant.
Belgrade said ahead of the talks that a declaration of independence by the Albanian majority in Kosovo would lead to new secessionist moves in the Balkans.

"It would not be the final stage of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, but the first stage of new disintegration and secession in the Balkans," said Serbia's Kosovo minister, Slobodan Samardzic, without further elaborating.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt raised the same concern on Monday, saying hasty independence could spark similar moves from ethnic Serbs in the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica and spark tensions among Serbs, Muslims and Croats in tiny Bosnia.

"We need a soft landing rather than a big crash. The Balkans is rather a fragile place," he said.

(Reporting by Mark John; editing by Elizabeth Piper)

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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