Major powers are calling on Serbia and Kosovo Albanians to show "constructive spirit" in their talks scheduled for Friday in New York, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Thursday.

 

Miliband told reporters after the six-nation contact group on Kosovo, which consists of Britain, France, Italy, Russia and the US, met in closed-door consultations at the UN headquarters.

 

The participants, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, agreed that "the status quo" in Kosovo was unsustainable, Miliband said.

 

They called on the representatives of Serbia and Kosovo Albanian to show a "constructive spirit" in the upcoming talks, Miliband added.

 

The meeting of the contact group was meant to be a last-minute effort to try to bridge differences between Serbia and Kosovo Albanians before the two sides hold their first direct talks over the final status of Kosovo on the sidelines of the ongoing general debate of the UN General Assembly.

 

Earlier in the day, Serbian President Boris Tadic told the assembly that only the UN Security Council can make a "legitimate decision" on the future status of its southern breakaway province of Kosovo.

 

He warned of "unforeseeable consequences" that would follow "a one-sided recognition of Kosovo's independence."

 

"The international legal order would never be the same, while many separatist movements world over would use the newly-established precedent," he said.

 

"Many regions in the world would be destabilized in that way," Tadic added.

 

Serbia has insisted that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia and therefore should remain within its border, while Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians account for 90 percent of its 2 million population, has repeatedly asked for complete independence.

 

Kosovo threatened to unilaterally declare independence if the extended 120-day talks come to nothing by December 10 when the so-called Kosovo troika, composed of envoys for the EU, the US and Russia, should report the result of the talks to the UN.

 

(Xinhua News Agency September 28, 2007)