Troika submits final report on Kosovo
10 December 2007
Four months of negotiations between the Serbs and the Kosovo Albanians on the Kosovo status ended without any results, the international troika of mediators said in a report submitted to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on December 7th. The UN Security Council will hold official discussions on the Kosovo status issue on December 19th.
US envoy Frank Wisner and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said separately on Saturday that they will insist negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina continue after Monday's deadline. Russia says that declaring Kosovo's independence without Serbia's agreement will harm international relations, while the US and most EU members see the independence as the only solution. Russia's Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said that his government would not allow Kosovo to join the UN and other international organizations if the province declares independence unilaterally.
The four biggest EU powers -- Germany, Britain, France, and Italy -- have launched a joint effort to persuade other EU members to recognize an independent Kosovo state. Diplomatic efforts on finding common ground in the EU will begin at a meeting of the foreign ministers on Monday, and are expected to run for a week before the EU summit in Lisbon. (AFP - 09/12/07; Fena, RIA Novosti, Danas AP, Reuters, AFP - 08/12/07; NATO website, Fena, Reuters, Tanjug, A1, AFP, MIA - 07/12/07)
Source: Southeast European Times
