Kosovo's Albanian leaders held talks Wednesday with Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, amid a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at resuming negotiations on the future of the breakaway Serbian province. The talks come as Western nations are trying to hammer out a compromise U.N. resolution on Kosovo that would give ethnic Albanians and Serbs four months to reach agreement on the province's future status. Although Kosovo officially remains a province of Serbia, it has been under U.N. and NATO administration since a NATO-led air war halted a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in 1999. New diplomatic attempts to resolve the impasse followed talks July 1-2 between U.S. President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Maine. Solana's meeting with Kosovo's President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Agim Ceku come on the heels of his talks with Serbian President Boris Tadic and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Associated Press reported. Sejdiu and Ceku are expected to press the Europeans to back the independence cause. The European Union is supposed to deploy a mission to Kosovo to replace the current U.N. administration there. But the Europeans have made it clear they will not do so until the U.N. Security Council adopts a resolution clearly mandating the transfer of authority. The draft resolution currently at the United Nations _ calling for four months of talks _ would address Russia's major objections.
