Serbia Warns EU, Russia Aims at U.S. Over Kosovo

BRUSSELS/BELGRADE - Serbia warned the EU on Wednesday it would not accept any decision on Kosovo taken outside the United Nations, and its ally Russia told the United States to stop backing Kosovo independence while talks continue.

Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, Russia's envoy in a troika with the European Union and the United States supervising Serb-Kosovo Albanian talks, accused Washington of bad faith for declaring support for Kosovo independence to occur later this year.

"I absolutely do not support that kind of attitude and those messages from the United States. I didn't expect that from the United States at the very moment negotiations began," he was quoted as saying by Serbia's daily Vecernje Novosti.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica also called on the West not to encourage the breakaway province to declare independence and said Belgrade was being constructive in negotiations to resolve Kosovo's future by Dec. 10.

He gave no hint of any progress in the talks.

"We do think that the United Nations and the Security Council are the sole institutions in which the problem of the future status of Kosovo should be dealt with," he said after talks in Brussels with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

"Everything else is a sort of violation of international law."

Efforts to win a Security Council resolution rubber-stamping a U.N. plan to put Kosovo on the road to independence broke down this year after Russia threatened to veto any such resolution.

Moscow insists any pact on the province, administered by the United Nations since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign to drive out Serb forces, must not be imposed on Belgrade.

Leaders of Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians say they will declare independence unilaterally if internationally mediated talks which began in Vienna last month do not yield anything and have called on the United States and EU to back them.

"I expected that America would support the negotiations and the search for a compromise solution," Russia's envoy said. "The U.S. comment that they will support an independent Kosovo is certainly not a message of support."


HOPES LOW

Hopes of progress have been low due to the huge gap between independence demands and Serbia's total rejection of those.

Kostunica warned at a later news conference with top European Commission officials that declaring independence would "seriously endanger stability and peace, not only in Western Balkans but elsewhere", and call into question U.N. authority.

He urged the Western states not to encourage that route.

"In that case the damage would not be only to Serbia, the damage would be much broader," he said.

"It would not be only damage for the countries that eventually recognise eventually independent Kosovo, but many other countries, many other regions...One cannot violate the U.N. charter in one case and not violate it in some others."

The troika is due to submit a report to the United Nations Secretary General on Dec. 10, a date Washington regards as a deadline after which a prompt decision must be made.

"This is only a deadline for the troika, but not for the negotiations", Botsan-Kharchenko said.

"Russia is against any kind of deadline. Negotiations are necessary until a compromise solution is reached. Russia will not give up the position that the last decision on Kosovo has to be made in the Security Council.

"Everything but that would be a breach of the international law. And Russia will not accept that."