Kosovo Wins Support For Split From Serbia

But senior Western officials affirmed at a meeting in New York in September that Kosovo's status is ripe for settlement, and diplomats are slated to gather today in Vienna to put final touches on the plan, for presentation to Serbian and Kosovo Albanian delegations Feb. 2.

Senior U.S. officials, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss details of the sensitive plan, conceded the moment is politically awkward: Serbian parties are struggling to form a new government after elections Sunday in which nationalists won the largest number of votes. At the same time, many Kosovo Albanians are angry that their most influential politician -- former rebel commander Ramush Haradinaj -- is slated to leave shortly for The Hague, for trial on war crimes charges.

But U.S. and European diplomats say former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, a special envoy of the U.N. secretary general, is ready after 14 months of discussions to make the plunge. He will recommend that Kosovo no longer be governed by the United Nations under a 1999 Security Council resolution that pledged to uphold the "principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Yugoslavia, a nation that no longer exists.

The diplomats said withdrawal of that U.N. resolution would allow Kosovo's estimated 1.7 million Albanians, 90 percent of the population, to declare independence from Serbia. The United States, Britain and Albania would quickly recognize that step but with the continuing international controls.

Although officials in Serbia are expected to protest loudly, their government "lost control of Kosovo in the 1990s. It was theirs to keep or lose, and they lost it. We're dealing now with the aftermath of actions by Slobodan Milosevic," a senior U.S. official said this week, referring to the late Yugoslav president. Likewise, diplomats believe Albanian leaders will publicly clamor for full independence but accept this package as the best they will get for now.

Germany, which holds the rotating E.U. presidency through June, has insisted that no decision be taken without Russian approval. But its diplomats also oppose striking a deal with Moscow to support the secessions from Georgia and permanent separation of the Transnistria region from Moldova.

The sources said Ahtisaari is likely to recommend establishment of a new U.N. mission in Kosovo under the direction of a longtime friend, Dutch diplomat Peter Feith. He previously headed a U.N. monitoring mission in the Indonesian province of Aceh and worked on ethnic conflicts in Bosnia and Macedonia.

The aim of the new mission would be to help the majority Albanian population build a country where Serbs and others "can live a dignified, safe and economically sustainable life," Ahtisaari told the 46-country Council of Europe on Wednesday. Total unemployment in the province is estimated at 35 to 50 percent but is higher among Serbs.

Under Ahtisaari's plan, Feith -- whose low-key title would be international civilian representative -- would have what one U.S. official called "edict power" to remove officials or invalidate legislation, similar to the authority of the high representative who still helps govern Bosnia under terms of the 1995 Dayton peace accords. Feith's deputy is expected to be an American, and his staff would number about 100.

A separate international "rule of law" monitoring mission, under the control of the European Union, would number roughly 1,000 and exercise authority over Kosovo's troubled local police force and corrupt local judiciary. Officials said the Kosovo Protection Corps, a shadow local military force, would probably be disbanded and replaced by a NATO-trained civil defense force that would form the nucleus of an eventual Western-allied army.

Kosovo's Serbs, estimated to number 114,000, would be given control of a handful of new municipalities sprinkled across the territory. There, they could draw on money from Serbia to help finance their own health clinics and schools. Serbian religious sites, repeatedly targeted by Albanian extremists, would gain new protections, and Serb lawmakers would have the right to invoke a "vital interests" claim to block noxious legislation, officials said.