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Report confirms deadlock in Kosovo

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon received a report confirming a deadlock in negotiations between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders and Serbia over the future status of Kosovo, but Russia called for further talks, saying "a solution is possible."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice disagreed, however, saying the time for negotiations was over. She said failure to move ahead on Kosovo's status was ignoring the reality in the Serb province where the ethnic-Albanian majority has pledged to declare independence with or without an international agreement.

The report sets the stage for a difficult period ahead, both at the UN and in Europe over Kosovo's future. It will pit the US and most European nations that back the ethnic Albanian quest for independence against Serbia and its close ally Russia.

The US, the EU and Russia reported to the secretary-general on Friday that negotiations "served a useful purpose" and led to "the most sustained and intense high-level direct dialogue since hostilities ended in Kosovo in 1999."

"Perhaps most important, Belgrade and Pristina reaffirmed the centrality of their European perspective to their future relations, with both sides restating their desire to seek a future under the common roof of the European Union," the negotiators said.

But they said the talks failed because "neither party was willing to cede its position on the fundamental question of sovereignty," a copy obtained by the Associated Press showed.

The negotiators said they could not bridge the gap between Kosovo's Albanian leadership, which refused to budge on its demand for independence, and the Serbian government, which offered a high degree of autonomy to Kosovo but insisted that the province remain part of Serbia.

The widely expected declaration of failure came after more than two years of negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians comprise 90 percent of the 7 million population.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin rejected the word "failure" to describe the 120 days of negotiations, calling the talks "a very worthwhile exercise ... that produced some serious results" and the first "substantive dialogue" in years.

"We believe that this outcome is quite encouraging," Churkin said.

While the Kosovo Albanians' refusal to show flexibility was regrettable, "we believe that certainly the talks revealed that a solution is possible," he said.

The UN Security Council is scheduled to discuss the Kosovo report on Dec. 19.

Rice on Friday made clear that the US would not support more negotiations.

"I think that process is at an end," she told reporters in Brussels, where she attended meetings with other NATO foreign ministers and Russia's foreign minister.

"We have to move on to the next step," Rice told a news conference. "It is not going to produce stability in the Balkans to ignore the reality of the situation."
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