United States blocks Kosovo deal, says Serbian PM

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica accused the United States on Tuesday of actively blocking a compromise solution for the breakaway province of Kosovo, whose Albanian majority demands independence.

"Every day, statements by American officials that Kosovo will become independent after December 10 ... aim to stop Kosovo Albanians from accepting a compromise solution for the province," he said in a statement.

The official news agency Tanjug quoted Kostunica as saying Washington's policy of "force" was an extension of NATO's 1999 bombing of Serbia "to deploy military forces in the province to take away 15 percent of our territory".

In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey rejected the Serbian accusations.

"We are not impeding anything. In fact we are actively working as part of the troika through (U.S.) Ambassador (Frank) Wisner to bring both sides together," Casey told reporters.

He said there was a limit to how long the talks could take.

"It has been clear to us and we have stated it publicly and privately, that barring an agreement among the parties, what we would believe appropriate and what we would tend to move forward with, would be a period of supervised autonomy for Kosovo."

The Serbian statement echoed previous charges that NATO, led by America, wants its own state on Serb territory. NATO denies that and says its intervention was aimed solely at stopping atrocities and ethnic cleansing by Serb forces.

There is no sign that Kosovo Albanian leaders would be open to compromise on independence, which has been the number one objective of the 90 percent Albanian majority since the United Nations took over Kosovo eight years ago.

Western diplomats say Serb leaders need to come to terms with the fact that Serbia will not rule Kosovo again.

They say the status quo -- in which Kosovo is legally Serbian but actually an international protectorate -- is unstable and that trying to preserve it via Belgrade's offer of "95 percent autonomy" is bad for Serbia's own interests.

Some analysts see the prospect of an outcome when one side can claim independence while the other claims it is not.

In Rome, visiting Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic suggested Kosovo could have nearly all the attributes of an independent state except a seat at the United Nations, if only it would compromise and accept Serb terms.

"Serbia is prepared to keep only a very narrowly defined set of sovereign competences ... for example, the seat on the United Nations," Jeremic said. While Kosovo might declare independence unilaterally, he said, it could not secure a UN seat that way.

Backed at the UN by Russia, Serbia earlier this year succeeded in stalling a plan for Kosovo independence under European Union supervision.

Serbs and Kosovo Albanians are now engaged in a new round of talks, mediated by the EU, the U.S. and Russia, which insist they would prefer an agreement acceptable to both sides.

(Additional reporting by Roberto Landucci in Rome)