"VN zoekt zelf oplossing voor Kosovo als partijen er niet uitkomen" (en)

The UN security council will itself decide on the final status of Kosovo if bilateral talks between Belgrade and Pristina do not result in a solution by the end of the year, an EU diplomat close to the talks has said.

"The contact group prefers an agreed solution," he explained, but if this cannot be reached "then the security council will have to take up its responsibilities," the source told Balkans agency DTT-NET.COM.

The contact group comprises the US, UK, Russia, Germany, Italy and France, with UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari to mediate the Serbia-Kosovo talks set to start the last week of July.

Mr Ahtisaari is currently trying to get Serbian leaders Boris Tadic and Vojislav Kostunica to meet with ethnic-Albanian Kosovo leaders Fatmir Sejdiu and Agim Ceku in Vienna.

But it is unclear at this stage who will come to the talks, with Serbia hostile to pro-independence Mr Ceku who has been indicted by Belgrade for war crimes against Serbs.

The EU diplomat added that the EU would play a similar role in Kosovo - after its status is resolved and the UN ends its mandate - as it does currently in Bosnia, which is helping keep the peace, improve living conditions and advise on the region's EU integration.

The end-July Vienna meeting would mark the second stage of Kosovo negotiations.

The first stage earlier this year dealt with devolving power to municipal authorities, reviving the Kosovan economy and negotiating the status of Serb religious sites - but with few results.

Mr Ahtisaari wants to continue the decentralisation talks in tandem with the second stage talks on the final status of the region in the hope that more self-rule for the Kosovan Serb minority will create good will.

Ethnic Albanians, who represent around 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million population insist on independence but Serbia and the Serbian minority in Kosovo are against the proposal.

Western diplomats have in the past few months hinted that the west, the US and the UK in particular, would like to see Kosovo gain full independence, despite Serb proposals for

limited Kosovan autonomy within a Serbian state.

Wider separatism problem

Meanwhile, contact group member Russia has been pushing the line that the Kosovo solution should form a precedent for separatist states in Moldova and Georgia.

The EU diplomat rejected the Russian line however, agreeing with the US and the UK that "all issues should be resolved according to their specifications."

Serbia has also stepped up lobbying efforts to the contact group, saying that Kosovan independence would be dangerous for the stability of the Western Balkan region.

Ever since Montenegro declared independence from Serbia in May, the Serb community in Bosnia and Herzegovina has renewed calls for the independence of the Republika Srpska region.

And local Serb politicians in northern Kosovo are threatening to split off their region and join with Serbia if Kosovo takes the independence route.

Kosovo unique, EU says

Both these scenarios have been strongly rejected by the contact group and the EU, with the UN fearing that a split of northern Kosovo would radicalise political demands of ethnic Albanians in the southern Serbian Presevo Valley region and also in the north-west of Macedonia.

The contact group Guiding Principles of November 2005 make clear that there should be: "no return of Kosovo to the pre-1999 situation, no partition of Kosovo, and no union of Kosovo with any or part of another country."

The UN took over rule of Kosovo from Serbia in June 1999 after NATO intervened to end a Serb force crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.