The last round of talks between the parties on Kosovo was held in Vienna on Saturday, and U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari said that the negotiations ended in deadlock, according to the Associated Press: “I regret to say that at the end of the day, there was no will on the part of the parties to move away from their positions…The parties’ respective statements on Kosovo’s status do not include any common ground.” The AP also reported that “Ahtisaari confirmed he would deliver the contentious package to the U.N. Security Council, which will have the final say on Kosovo’s status, by the end of the month…”
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Reuters reported that “Serbia called on the United Nations on Saturday to reject a Western-backed proposal for the independence of Kosovo as Serbs and Albanians ended a year of talks on the fate of the breakaway province. President Boris Tadic made the appeal in Vienna at a final meeting between leaders of Serbia and Kosovo’s 90-percent Albanian majority before the plan drafted by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari goes to the Security Council. In a copy of his speech distributed to media, Tadic said he expected ‘serious debate’ at the U.N. Security Council. ‘If Ahtisaari’s proposal was to be accepted, it would be the first time in contemporary history that territory would be taken away from a democratic, peaceful country in order to satisfy the aspirations of a particular ethnic group that already has its nation-state’, he said. ‘The sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia cannot be compromised’, he told the meeting in Vienna’s Hofburg Palace. Ahtisaari has long said an agreed solution is impossible. The West wants the U.N. Security Council to impose a solution by June, seeing no prospect of forcing 2 million Albanians back into the arms of Serbia. Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica … says sometime Serbian ally Russia will use its veto to block Ahtisaari’s plan, or at least delay it. A political source close to the talks said Serbia had again insisted the talks continue. But NATO allies leading 16,500 troops in Kosovo fear delay would only bring violence.”
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