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Only independent Kosovo can stabilize Balkans: Rice By Paul Taylor NEW YORK (Reuters) - Only independence for Kosovo can bring stability in the Balkans, and Europe should join the United States in backing statehood for the breakaway Serbian province, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday. In an interview with Reuters, she said talks brokered by the European Union, Russia and the United States had some chance of achieving an "amicable outcome" even if Kosovo and Serbia did not agree on the final status of the territory. "But there's going to be an independent Kosovo. We're dedicated to that....

Washington/Belgrade, 23 July(AKI) – Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders were due to meet in Washington on US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice on Monday to try and clarify the diplomatic impasse over the breakaway province's independence from Serbia. The Kosovan leaders and Rice will try and chart a way forward on the province's future status after the United Nations Security Council last Friday withdrew a draft resolution granting Kosovo internationally supervised independence. After repeated efforts to push through a resolution based on the proposal by UN special negotiator Martti Ahtisaari, western powers, which favour independence, decided to shift the problem to...

President Bush, getting a hero's welcome as the first American president to visit this Balkan nation, said Sunday that there cannot be endless dialogue about achieving independence for neighboring Kosovo. "Sooner rather than later you've got to say `Enough's enough. Kosovo's independent,'" Bush said during a news conference with the prime minister of this tiny, impoverished country. Bush's press for statehood was aimed at Russia and others that object to Kosovo's independence. Standing alongside Prime Minister Sali Berisha, Bush said any extension of talks on Kosovo must have "certain independence" as the goal. In response to Albania's push for NATO...

<p>Bush said a proposal floated at last week's Group of Eight summit in Germany by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who suggested a six-month delay to try to ease Russian objections to independence, would work only if statehood was the ultimate objective.</p>

TIRANA (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Sunday the United Nations should grant independence quickly to the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo, and if Russia continued to block it the West would act. "At some point in time, sooner rather than later, you've got to say enough is enough, Kosovo is independent," he told a news conference on the first visit by a U.S. president to Albania. Bush said he was "worried about expectations not being met" in Kosovo, where 90 percent of the population are ethnic Albanians demanding independence from Serbia and where NATO leads a peacekeeping...

UNITED NATIONS June 1 (UPI) -- Sponsors of a draft U.N. Security Council resolution granting supervised independence to Serbia's southern province of Kosovo have softened wording in the measure due to strong opposition. Yet the bottom line remains independence for the province that has been under U.N. administration since 1999. Russia, one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the panel of 15, does not agree with taking control of the autonomous province of about 2 million people away from Belgrade. China also is opposed. Moscow has hinted it would veto the measure when it comes up for a vote,...

"We will be circulating today with our European allies a resolution in the Security Council that we believe will lead to the independence of Kosovo by the end of this month," Burns told journalists in the Croatian capital Zagreb. "The United States is strongly supporting the independence of Kosovo." The UN Security Council is set to begin debate soon on two competing texts -- one Western and one Russian -- that will form the basis of a draft resolution on Kosovo's future status. Burns, speaking after meeting with Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, also warned against Serbian ultra-nationalists entering a...

Prishtina, Kosovo IT'S A BUSY TIME in southeast Europe, where self-congratulation is mixed with anxiety at the 50th anniversary of the European Union. Romania and Bulgaria, neither of which has much to offer in the way of stable institutions or economic development, are now E.U. member states. One of the first effects of Romanian membership was the sudden appearance of an anti-Jewish, Holocaust-denying bloc of deputies in the European Parliament, including five representing the crude neo-fascism of the Greater Romania Party (GRP). The GRP is headed by Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a former court poet for Bucharest's Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu....

Kosovo debate reaches U.S. Senate WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate will this week start discussions "over a Kosovo status resolution. Senator Joseph Lieberman (FoNet) The draft resolution, submitted by senators Joseph Lieberman, Joseph Biden, John McCain and Gordon Smith, backs UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari’s proposal, stating that a supervised independence would be the only possible solution to the province’s status. The resolution also urges President George Bush to increase U.S. pressure in the UN Security Council in order to have Kosovo declared an independent state, “without redrawing borders.” The senators also advocate swift establishment of diplomatic ties with Kosovo...

The breakaway British region of Scotland could be among the beneficiaries of this week's expected UN recommendation that Kosovo be granted provisional independence from Serbia, leading in time to full sovereign status. If the plan backed by the US, Britain and Germany is formally accepted by the UN security council, it will be taken as an important international legal precedent by would-be separatist movements from Georgia to Moldova to Chechnya, and possibly also the Scottish National party. ... Kosovo has been part of Serbia since the Middle Ages. By comparison, the Act of Union binding Scotland and England dates back...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United States backs a plan giving supervised independence to Serbia's breakaway Kosovo province and expects a United Nations Security Council vote on the proposal by summer, a senior U.S. official said on Monday. The plan, drafted by U.N. special envoy and former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, went to the Security Council on Monday after a year of fruitless negotiations between Serbia and the majority ethnic Albanians in the province. "The United States does support the proposal by President Ahtisaari for a supervised independence for Kosovo," UnderSecretary of State Nicholas Burns said in Brussels. "After a year...

Mr Chen set out a "four wants" policy for Taiwanese independence China has hit out at Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian after he made a strongly pro-independence speech on Sunday.Mr Chen said Taiwan should pursue independence, write a new constitution and change its official name from "Republic of China" to Taiwan. China's Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said anyone wanting to split Taiwan from the mainland was a "criminal". The row came as China opened its annual session of parliament and announced a hike in defence spending. Mr Chen, in a speech to a pro-independence group on Sunday, said: "Taiwan should...

In yesterday’s discussion at the Foreign Policy Chamber of the Polish Parliament’s Lower house, deputy foreign minister Pavel Koval stressed that Poland was against the postponements of the Kosovo status settlement and against any partition of the province, PAP Agency reports. Koval accused official Belgrade of taking an obstructive approach to the negotiations with Kosovo Albanians. “We believe that Belgrade’s attempts to thwart Ahtisaari’s efforts do not serve Serbia’s interests. Serbia should accept reality and focus on the activities which will bring it closer to the EU”, Koval said. Koval said that the Polish Government was convinced that peace and...

BELGRADE/PRISTINA/TIRANA/BERLIN(Own report) - Serbia should relinquish its southern province of Kosovo and place itself under the patronage of its former enemies. That is the gist of the offer which the German presidency made to the Belgrade government last Monday. As a reward for the renunciation of Kosovo, negotiations would be opened with the EU for an association agreement. The territorial self-amputation, which Berlin expects in the name of the EU, would break the Serbian constitution and create a dangerous precedent of forced secession of territories by appeals to "self determination" from violent minorities. Organisations connected with German foreign policy have...

In front of me as I write there sits a piece of Kosovo. It's a jagged lump, about three centimetres high, off-white with some glinting, yellowy metallic bits embedded in it. It was given to me by the late Ibrahim Rugova, long-time leader of the Albanian Kosovans' non-violent movement for independence and a passionate mineralogist. I also have before me my own photos of Kosovo's armed conflict, attempted genocide, liberation and international occupation in the last three years of Europe's bloody last century. The bombed, machine-gunned and looted villages, mosques and churches, fresh blood staining white snow, a dispossessed woodcutter...

11.2.2007 16:34 DECANI, (Tanjug) - The Serbian Orthodox Church has condemned in the strongest terms ''barbaric'' messages of Self-Determination movement leader Albin Kurti and other participants of the Saturday demonstrations in Pristina who shouted that ''Serbs occupied Albanian churches and monasteries'' in Kosovo and that they should ''be destroyed.'' Several thousand Kosovo Albanian members of the Self-Determination movement and supporters of the so-called Kosovo liberation army protested against UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari's plan for the status of Kosovo in Pristina on Saturday.

Belgrade, Feb 7, 2007 – President of the Coordinating Centre for Kosovo-Metohija Sanda Raskovic-Ivic stated last night that Kosovo independence is unacceptable to the Serbian side as the solution of the province's status, adding that there are realistic reasons for postponing the talks until after new Serbian parliament is formed. Raskovic-Ivic told RTS television last night that the government lost its legitimacy after the elections of January 21 and the Serbian President was the only legitimate representative who could meet with UN Special Envoy for Kosovo-Metohija Martti Ahtisaari when he presented his plan for the province's future status to Serbia....

6.2.2007 14:49 PRISTINA, (Tanjug) - US President George Bush has proposed that 279 million dollars be allocated from the US budget in the form of additional assistance to be granted after the resolution of the province's status.

Serbia's president says he will never accept the independence of Kosovo, after the publication of a UN plan which could allow it to separate. UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari's plan recommends that Kosovo should govern itself democratically and be able to make international agreements. But President Boris Tadic said the plan paved the way for independence, which he and Serbia would not accept. Kosovo's leader said he believed the process would end in full independence. "Kosovo will be sovereign like all other countries," President Fatmir Sejdiu said, after meeting Mr Ahtisaari. 'Dangerous precedent' The UN has administered Kosovo since a...

The United States has reaffirmed its support for the efforts of United Nations Kosovo envoy Martti Ahtisaari for determining the final status of the breakaway Serbian province. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called on all sides of the issue to sit down and listen to the envoy's proposals, which Ahtisaari is to present to leaders in Belgrade and Pristina on Friday. The proposal is widely expected to grant the U.N.-administered province some attributes of a sovereign state, while guaranteeing the security of its Serb minority. Vojislav Kostunica Outgoing Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica has said he will not meet with...