USA Backs Supervised Independence For Kosovo

The United States backs a plan giving supervised independence to Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo.

They expects a United Nations Security Council vote on it by summer, a senior U.S. official said on Monday.

The plan, drafted by U.N. special envoy and former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, is due to reach the Security Council on Monday after a year of fruitless Serb-Albanian negotiations.

"The United States does support the proposal by President Ahtisaari for a supervised independence for Kosovo," U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said in Brussels.

"After a year of effort and a year of conversation it's time the Kosovars received their just due."

The Ahtisaari plan would give independence to the 90-percent Albanian-majority province but provides for an EU overseer and broad self-government for the remaining 100,000 Serbs.

A Western diplomat quoted the report as saying "upon careful consideration of Kosovo's recent history (and) the realities of Kosovo ... the only viable option is independence supervised for an initial period by the international community."

Serbia rejects independence for Kosovo as a violation of international law. It says it would never accept the amputation of the province it sees as the cradle of the Serb nation.

The U.S. and EU have set an unofficial deadline of June for a new Security Council resolution endorsing the blueprint, eight years after the West went to war to wrest control of the territory from the forces of late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic.

Burns said he expected five to seven weeks of consultations with Kosovo Albanian leaders, the Serb government and members of the Security Council to try to format the best resolution.

"We are going to reach out to the Russians, the Chinese, the other members of the Security Council," Burns said. "It's a complex issue, you just can't do it overnight. But we would hope that by April or May it will be time to pass this resolution."

U.N. veto holder Russia, which backs Serbia, has called for the talks to continue, if necessary under a new mediator. Moscow insists a solution must be acceptable to both Albanians and Serbs, a task Western analysts say is impossible.

Ten thousand Albanians died and almost one million fled during Serbia's 1998-99 counter-insurgency war against Albanian separatist guerrillas.

NATO allies heading 16,500 troops in Kosovo say Albanians will not accept a longer wait for independence and have warned of unrest. EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has warned of "chaos" if Ahtisaari's plan collapses.

"There is a lot at stake," NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer said on Monday, adding he hoped the Security Council would decide "sooner rather than later."