Talks on the future status of Kosovo should continue beyond next month's U.N. deadline, a Russian envoy said Tuesday, the second day of a critical round of internationally mediated negotiations on the fate of the breakaway province, according to AP. Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, Russia's representative to the «troika» that also includes envoys from the U.S. and the European Union, told reporters that Moscow would insist the talks go on even after Dec. 10, the envoys' deadline to report back to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. This week's session in the Austrian spa town of Baden is seen as a final attempt to reach a negotiated settlement. But the situation remains deadlocked, with Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders pressing for full independence from Serbia, and their Serbian rivals saying the southern province must remain part of Serbia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, meanwhile, reiterated the Kremlin's contention that the U.S. has been encouraging Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority in its quest for statehood. «We again told our American colleagues that constant incantations about the inevitability of Kosovo's independence only undermine our common efforts» to forge a compromise, Lavrov said in the U.S. after talks with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in remarks broadcast Tuesday by Russian media.
