10 February, 2007 - Prishtine - The United Nations has one more time agreed to a Serbian request to delay final talks on the fate of breakaway Kosovo province by a week to give Belgrade time to appoint delegates, a UN mediator said on yesterday.

Albert Rohan, deputy to UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari, said consultations that had been due to start in Vienna on February 13 would now begin on February 21, ending by early March.

"We want to give the Serb side a chance to come to Vienna," he told reporters after meeting Kosovo Albanian leaders.

A plan unveiled last week by Ahtisaari offers Serbia's southern province, which has a 90 per cent Albanian majority, a path to independence under the supervision of the European Union, a move Serbia rejects.

Yesterday's announcement marked the second delay in the process in three months as the West advances carefully to avoid radicalizing Serbia.

Albanians are impatient for the UN Security Council to endorse the plan, but Serbian President Boris Tadic had asked for time to allow formation of a new parliament following a January 21 election. Lawmakers would then mandate new negotiators.

Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu agreed to the change in dates, but said "delay will not produce any positive effects".

Ahtisaari plans to send his blueprint, product of a year of shuttle diplomacy and largely fruitless Serb-Albanian talks, to the Security Council by the end of March.

Almost eight years have passed since NATO bombs drove Serb forces out of Kosovo to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians in a two-year counter-insurgency war under late Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic. Bombing was also a result of Serbia's refusal to sign the "Rambuillet Accord", according to which Kosovo would be granted autonomy under the Yugoslav Federation.

Although Serbia refused to sign the accord in 1999, it is now is agreeing to sign a Rambuillet type of accord by offering autonomy to Kosovo. This is unacceptable to Kosovo Albanians as over 10,000 civilians have been killed by Serb forces after the Rambuillet talks.

Some 4,000 Serbs in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica demonstrated yesterday against Ahtisaari's blueprint.

Evoking Western fears of a breakaway bid by the mainly Serb north, political leader Milan Ivanovic warned that Serbs too "have the right to self-determination".

Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, said he saw no prospect of Serbs and Albanians agreeing. "I fear the UN Security Council will have to decide, given how much the views of both parties are diametrically opposed," he told French newspaper Le Monde. "Time will not resolve the issue. Even if I negotiated all my life, they would not agree."

Ahtisaari's proposal has been welcomed by the population of Kosovo as it takes into consideration their right of self-determination.