The European Union plans to withdraw the issue of Kosovo's final status from the UN Security Council if Russia does not accept a resolution within days, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said yesterday.

He made the comment after ethnic Albanian leaders in the breakaway Serbian province said the Council had failed on Kosovo and urged the West to offer an alternative route to independence from Serbia.

Russia on Monday rejected a third draft UN resolution on the province, a watered-down text calling for more Serb-Albanian talks but which Moscow said was still "permeated with the concept of the independence of Kosovo".

Solana said a further 120-day period of shuttle diplomacy between Belgrade and Pristina would be conducted instead under the authority of the major power Contact Group, where Moscow has a seat but not a veto.

Asked whether UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari would remain as mediator, he said: "I cannot answer that formally now but I think it will probably under the aegis of the Contact Group."

The informal group, created in the mid-1990s to oversee Balkan diplomacy, comprises the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

Solana said there was still a short period left to make a final push for a UN resolution. He was speaking hours after meeting Ahtisaari, whose peace plan called for Kosovo to be given independence under EU supervision.

The former Finnish president left without commenting. Diplomats said the United States was loath to dump Ahtisaari, seeing it as too much of a concession to Moscow.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after meeting Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica that Berlin still wanted a UN resolution but made clear it too was eyeing other routes.

"We are now thinking about whether it would be possible to support a phase of negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina to try once again to find a solution," Merkel told reporters.

"The Serbian government believes we should begin negotiations (with Pristina) as soon as possible and no resolution is needed for this," Kostunica said.

"These negotiations should get underway without any interference from the Ahtisaari plan," he said.

(China Daily via agencies July 18, 2007)