Kosovo president Fatmir Sejdiu and prime minister Agim Ceku were expected to take part in the talks at the Austrian foreign ministry, as well as Serbian President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.

The talks, led by the troika made up of European Union mediator Wolfgang Ischinger and his Russian and US counterparts, Frank Wisner and Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, follows another meeting in Vienna on October 22, where little progress appeared to have been achieved.

"We have two different concepts," Ceku said at the time, following talks with the Serbs.

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders want the Serbs to accept a plan by the UN's former Kosovo envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, to establish internationally supervised independence for Kosovo, which has a 90-percent ethnic Albanian population.

Meanwhile, Serbia has rejected Ahtisaari's plan and Russia has threatened to veto any move in the UN Security Council to award independence to Kosovo.

Kosovo is demanding independence, while Serbia says only to grant autonomy to the region.

Monday's talks are expected to focus again on a 14-point document drawn up by the troika, which calls for the presence of an international civil and military mission to oversee the province but barely touches on the issue of Kosovo's status and makes no mention of independence, according to the Austria Press Agency.

Kosovo has been administered by a UN mission since mid-1999, after a NATO bombing campaign ended the brutal crackdown by Serbian forces against Kosovo Albanians

The troika is due to submit its report to the United Nations on December 10.


Agencies

Güncelleme Tarihi: 05 Kasım 2007, 12:47