Kosovo leaders on Wednesday dismissed the notion of Kosovo partition and vowed to keep the province intact, news reports reaching Tirana from Pristina said.
"The independence and territorial integrity of Kosovo is non-negotiable," Kosovo President Fatmir Sedjiu said.
Dutch Foreign Minister Maxim Verhagen said on Tuesday on his tour to Belgrade and Pristina that his government will accept any negotiated solution to the Kosovo issue, including a partition of the province.
"Should both parties be willing to accept a solution that is both sustainable and possible to implement, the Netherlands government would find it acceptable," Verhagen was reported as saying.
Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku also dismissed the very notion of the province's partition as acceptable.
"We can never approve of partition. It is unacceptable," Ceku said, "If we start redrawing borders, who knows when and where it will stop."
Kosovo, Serbia's southern breakaway province, has been run by the United Nations since 1999 after 78 days of NATO bombing drove out the Serbian forces fighting Albanian separatists.
Serbia has stated repeatedly that Kosovo is an integral part of its territory and vowed to keep it, while Kosovo, where 90 percent of its population are ethnic Albanians, had said it will accept nothing short of its independence.
A troika of envoys from the United States, the European Union and Russia will chair a new round of talks on the final status of Kosovo in Vienna later this month.
(Xinhua News Agency August 30, 2007)
