U.S. says it's important to resolve Kosovo's status

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Friday it wanted to see Serbia's Kosovo province, which is expected to proclaim its independence on Sunday, finally settle its status.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said diplomacy was going on, but that Washington still favored supervised independence for Kosovo.

Serbian President Boris Tadic on Friday vowed to preserve the region, which is steeped in Serb history but now home to 2 million Albanians, a 90 percent majority. Russia also warned that international recognition of Kosovo would influence its policy toward other breakaway regions in ex-Soviet republics.

"The diplomacy hasn't stopped. We continue our diplomacy," McCormack told reporters. He said Washington was aware of Serbia's views. "It's an emotional, sensitive issue, we understand that."

"But as we have pointed out in the past it is important to bring some final conclusion to the status of Kosovo," McCormack said. The United States believed "some form of supervised independence ... will lead to a more peaceful, a more stable region."

Most European Union members and the United States are expected to recognize Kosovo. They say Serbia lost the moral right to rule there because of its brutality in pursuing a policy of "ethnic cleansing" under the late President Slobodan Milosevic, and because there is no hope of compromise.

Russia, which backs its ally Serbia in opposing the move, has warned it might respond by recognizing separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia which have broken away from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.

Moscow said on Friday it would have to "take into account" any Kosovo declaration of independence recognition in connection with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but did not say whether Russia would grant them recognition.

McCormack said the situations were not comparable. "The situation in Kosovo ... has no precedent for any other situation, whether it's Abkhazia or any place else." (Editing by Alan Elsner)