JURIST - Paper Chase: EU states press for resolution of Kosovo status

[JURIST] European Union (EU) [official website] foreign ministers decided Monday during a meeting in Brussels to step up their involvement in the UN-supervised independence plan for Kosovo [JURIST news archive], which has been at an impasse after running into intense resistance from Russia. Previous UN proposals regarding the future of Kosovo have been rejected by Russia, including the most recent, which did not call for immediate independence. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov [official website] had said that the latest resolution was substantially the same as earlier drafts and that it simply assumed an independence plan by UN Kosovo Envoy Martti Ahtisaari [official website] would go into effect if 120 days of additional negotiations failed to produce results. The EU ministers Monday avoided mention of independence but instead backed a "troika," joint oversight of diplomacy talks [Deutsche Presse report] between Serbia and Kosovo, backed by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to determine Kosovo's status.

On Friday, the UN Security Council [official website] abandoned a resolution [JURIST report] on the independence plan out of concern that Russia would veto the proposal. Kosovar Prime Minister Agim Ceku [official website] has urged the international community to quickly adopt a UN-supervised independence plan for Kosovo, saying that the Kosovar people's desire for an identity should not be held "hostage" to the opposition. In April, Kosovo's parliament voted 100-1 to support a UN plan [JURIST reports] to establish an independent Kosovar state under UN supervision. Ceku said Friday that the UN negotiations had hit a dead-end and that the Kosovar parliament should adopt a resolution setting November 28 as a possible date for declaring the province's independence. Reuters has more.

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