Serbia rows back on Kosovo 'cantons'

Serbia rowed back from a proposal to divide the ethnically torn province of Kosovo into "cantons" yesterday after the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said it was a non-starter.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said following the first of several meetings with senior EU officials that creating "sub-regions" in Kosovo would help prevent a repeat of last week's clashes between Albanian and Serb communities.

But, emerging from talks with Mr Solana a few hours later, he spoke only of "decentralisation" and "new institutional devices" and insisted that Belgrade was not in favour of carving up Kosovo.

"When they sat down, Mr Solana immediately said cantonisation is not a word the EU uses," one diplomat said. "When the word appeared over lunch he was urged not to use it."

Mr Solana, who is due to travel to Kosovo today, told Mr Kostunica he was keen to help find ways to protect Kosovo's minority Serb community, but within a multi-ethnic society.

Kosovo is legally a part of Serbia and Montenegro, the state union that replaced Yugoslavia, but has been ruled by the United Nations since Nato's 1999 bombing campaign to end Serb repression of the ethnic Albanian majority.

Its unresolved final status is the subject of bitter dispute between independence-seeking Albanians and Serbs who say the province could be granted autonomy, but only within Serbia and Montenegro sovereignty.

The United Nations, which has laid down democratic and other standards Kosovo must meet by mid-2005 for talks to begin on its final status, has rejected any suggestion of "cantonisation".

Kosovo's Albanian Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi has accused Kostunica of inflaming ethnic tension by suggesting - when laying out the policies of his government earlier this month - that Kosovo could be divided into Albanian and Serb territory.

"I explained the idea of decentralisation, that is the word that I am using, which is some sort of additional protection of the Serbian and non-Albanian population in Kosovo," Mr Kostunica said at a joint news conference with Mr Solana.

Although he did not spell out what this might entail, he said it was important to prevent a repeat of the violence that erupted on March 17 and left 28 people dead and 870 injured.