Kosovo in Limbo

Serbia and Kosovo were at loggerheads at a United Nations Security Council meeting in New York. Kosovo's 90-percent Albanian majority is ready to declare independence within weeks, but Serbia insists that the province must remain part of its territory.

Neither side was willing to compromise during Wednesday's meeting.

"The potential for a negotiated solution is now exhausted," a joint statement by EU ambassadors on the Security Council and the United States said following the meeting.

The US and key European Union nations back Kosovo's call for independence, and have pledged their future support.

But on Wednesday, Russia said it stood behind its close ally Serbia's call for further negotiations on autonomy for the province.

The US and EU statement said that as irreconcilable efforts stand in the way, "the EU stands ready to play a leading role in implementing a settlement defining Kosovo's future status."

Listening to both sides

The 15-member Security Council met in a closed-door session to hear Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and Kosovo's President Fatmir Sejdiu make their respective cases.

It was the first council debate since a "troika" of mediators -- the EU, Russia and the United States -- said on Dec. 10 that four months of talks between Belgrade and Kosovo's Albanian separatists had failed to reach a compromise on the issue of sovereignty.

Kostunica said that a unilateral declaration of independence supported by Western nations would undermine the UN Charter and mark the beginning of a new era "in which might is above right."

He said it would trigger a "serious crisis," but did not comment on what action Serbia might take.

Sejdiu, president of the UN-run province, told the Council that the collapse of the former Yugoslavia was "one of the great tragedies of the modern era."

"We are exhausted after nearly two decades of isolation, war and political limbo," he said, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians in the 1990s. He stressed that co-existence of Serbia and Kosovo in the same state was impossible.

Still in limbo

Wednesday's meeting ended with no action taken -- which the EU

and the United States said was equivalent to closing the door on UN efforts to resolve the province's status.

Last week, EU leaders said they were prepared to send around 1,800 police and prosecutors to Kosovo as part of a UN proposal to grant the province "supervised independence."

At the same time, EU leaders also offered Serbia "accelerated" entry into the European Union.

Russia has said that the EU police mission would be illegal without UN approval, but Western diplomats at the United Nations refuted that notion.

In April, then UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari presented a plan offering Kosovo "supervised independence."

Under the proposal, international agencies would guide Kosovo toward full independence and membership to the United Nations. The agencies, however, would also have the power to prevent the province from merging with Albania as well as keep Serb areas from splitting off to become part of Serbia.

Western ambassadors have said that UN Security Council Resolution 1244 -- passed after NATO pushed Serbian forces out of Kosovo in 1999 -- allowed for the implementation of Ahtisaari's plan.

Many Serbs consider Kosovo the cultural cradle of their identity. The province has been administered by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO ended Serbia's crackdown on and ethnic cleansing of separatist ethnic-Albanians.