Serbia’s prime minister and Kosovo’s president got permission to present their contrary views on the future status of Kosovo to the U.N. Security Council next week.Italy’s U.N. Ambassador Marcello Spatafora, the current council president said that fifteen members of council agreed that Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica would speak as the representative of his country and Kosovo’s president, Fatmir Sejdiu, would speak at a closed council meeting.
Since last week, the council has many times discussed the format for Dec. 19 meeting, with the major issue to allow Sejdiu to speak or not.

The council meeting will focus on a report by United States, EU and Russian mediators in two-year talks between Belgrade and Kosovo on resolving the status of the Serbian province. The talks ended in the late November without an agreement.

Ethnic Albanians of Kosovo refused to shift from their demand for independence while Serbia insists that province must remain part of its territory.

Kosovo’s Sejdiu declared that the province was a few days away from becoming independent of Serbia. Last week, a spokesman for the Kosovo authorities said independence would be declared in the first months of 2008.

The U.S. and many European nations, who support Kosovo’s demand for independence, insisted that Kosovo’s representative be allowed to address the council on Dec. 19, while Russia was reluctant.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said that Russia proposed the compromise that was accepted, a private rather than public meeting where Kostunica and Sejdiu would present their views. Other interested countries can attend the closed meeting, but will not be allowed to speak.

Churkin said, “We proceeded from our position of principle that the parties should continue negotiations on the future status of Kosovo, that the international community should support them … and should encourage them to reach a mutually acceptable solution to this problem,

“So the council will have this opportunity to hear the two sides and to give, we hope, the message of continued political effort, but at the same time it will be clear that the political standing of the two parties participating in the discussion is completely different,” he added.