BELGRADE (Reuters) - Kosovo Albanians told the West on Friday to stop wasting time trying to win over Russia to the province's secession from Serbia and prepare for a unilateral declaration of independence.
In Belgrade, Serb parties countered the tough line, drafting a fresh parliamentary resolution that threatened an "energetic" response to any country thinking of recognising Kosovo as a state.
An air of crisis built up as NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer came to the Serb capital to call for calm. He spoke of "the last chance" and offered no way out of the diplomatic impasse at the United Nations.
Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leader Veton Surroi said the United Nations no longer offered a route to independence because of Russia's obstruction on behalf of its ally Serbia.
"Plan A has failed. Now we're on to Plan B," he told a news conference. "There's no point in consulting Russia anymore. We did not enter this process to meet the desires of other states."
Surroi sits on Kosovo's "unity team" with interim President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Agim Ceku, a pact meant to maintain stability as pressure for independence mounts.
His comments echoed those of Ceku, who urged the European Union this week to be "more courageous" and set a date by which Kosovo could declare independence unilaterally.
With one eye on possible elections in November, Kosovo's political leaders are nearly out of patience with Western powers who promised them independence by mid-year but are now proposing four months of further talks with no guarantee of the outcome.
In May Russia blocked adoption of a U.N. blueprint offering Kosovo independence under European Union supervision.
On Friday it shot down the fifth and latest Western draft, a watered-down resolution calling for 120 days of Serb-Albanian talks on top of 13 fruitless months of negotiations for a compromise that no one gas been able to describe.
Russia's Vladimir Titov, a deputy foreign minister, rejected "cosmetic" tinkering with a text, saying "fundamental" changes were needed.
Russia says Serbia must consent to any solution but Serbs reject independence for land cherished as their spiritual heartland. Political hardliners say Serbia should cut diplomatic ties with any country that recognizes Kosovo.
NATO's de Hoop Scheffer urged flexibility.
"I have the impression that this resolution ... might provide the last chance for all the parties concerned," he told reporters in Belgrade. He said the status quo was untenable.
"There is a lot at stake for everybody in Kosovo, but certainly also for the 16,000 men and women in uniform in KFOR."
NATO has patrolled the territory since bombing Serbia in 1999 to expel its forces and halt the killing and expulsion of Albanian civilians in a two-year war with separatist guerrillas.
It also fears that Albanian hardliners could turn to violence against KFOR and U.N. officials in the province if the West is seen to have broken its word.
(Additional reporting by Christian Lowe in Moscow, Ivana Sekularac in Belgrade, and Fatos Bytyci in Pristina).
Source : www.reuters.com
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