U.N. council fails to break impasse on Kosovo Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:49pm EST powered by SphereSphere By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council failed on Thursday to break a long-standing deadlock over Kosovo despite a last-ditch effort by Russia and Serbia to prevent the Serbian province from declaring independence. The 15-nation council met behind closed doors at the request of Serbia to discuss plans by the predominantly Albanian region to proclaim its independence on Sunday. Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic told the extraordinary council session that Serbia would not resort to military force but would use all other means to keep Kosovo from seceding. "We shall undertake all diplomatic, political, and economic measures designed to impede and reverse this direct and unprovoked attack on our sovereignty," Jeremic said in a text of his speech made available to media. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, he declined to give details, describing the specific measures as a "state secret." Jeremic said Serbia, like its close ally Russia, saw Kosovo's planned secession as a violation of international law and would never accept it. He urged the council to take last-minute action to prevent the province from splitting off. The United States and European Union said in December the council was hopelessly deadlocked on Kosovo after months of negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina yielded no results. After the meeting, U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Alejandro Wolff, said the impasse remained. "This council is blocked, as it has been," he told reporters. Jeremic and Russia's U.N. envoy said most council members who spoke expressed their support for Belgrade's desire to reopen negotiations with Pristina. But British Ambassador John Sawers said the council was evenly split between those who favored more talks and those who saw no point in them. Jeremic said in his speech that Kosovo's independence would be "a disaster of unfathomable proportions" and dozens of other disgruntled territories around the world would follow suit. Kosovo has been under U.N. administration since 1999, when NATO troops were deployed there after the Western alliance bombed Serbia to compel it to stop killing and driving out Albanians in a counterinsurgency war. RUSSIA WARNS OF VIOLENCE, EXTREMISM Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, warned the council the impact of secession would be "a real danger of inter-ethnic violence and increase in extremist activities in Kosovo and in the Balkans as a whole." Both Churkin and Jeremic dismissed arguments that Kosovo was unique and should therefore be allowed to secede. But Wolff made clear that Washington, like the EU, saw Kosovo as a special case. "The ethnic cleansing policies of Slobodan Milosevic ... ensured that Kosovo would never again be ruled from Belgrade," Wolff said. Milosevic, president of the former Yugoslavia, was on trial for war crimes when he died in his cell in 2006. Ninety percent of Kosovo's 2 million people are ethnic Albanians, but around 120,000 Serbs remain. Jeremic made clear that Belgrade feared for the lives of the Serbs and called for NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers to protect them from "a repeat of the ethnic cleansing against the Serb population." An EU mission of some 2,000 police and judges will aim to ensure that Kosovo's leaders keep their promises to build an equitable, multiethnic state under the rule of law. Once Kosovo declares independence the United States and most EU and other Western countries are expected to recognize it. Russia and Serbia have said they will never recognize it. (Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
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