A group of Balkans experts from the foreign ministries that make up the 'Contact Group' (US, Russia, Germany, France, Italy and Great Britain) just gathered in Vienna to discuss the destiny of Kosovo, a province of Serbia with an Albanian majority, administered by the UN since 1999.

Action meeting. The experts met on August 30th marking the resumption of the peace negotiations, which have been idle since the start of the year. The goal of the meeting is was identify and select a series of proposals that the US with Russia and the EU will offer to the Serbian and the regional Kosovan government, to reach a pragmatic solution of the controversy. The feeling is that the province will obtain independence from Belgrade, albeit monitored by the international community. This had already been indicated in the draft agreement presented in January by Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari, then special envoy for the Kosovo question. However, the Serbian government is not alone in opposing this solution, as the Russian government has never stopped supporting Belgrade in this battle and that Russia counts on its right of veto at the UN Security Council. At the last summit, which took place last month, no steps ahead were made in the negotiations, but it looks like after a period when the tension in the country between Albanians and Serbians had eased, the looming summit is heating people's souls up.

The risk of a new conflict. The International Crisis Group, a think tank that monitors and analyses conflict hot spots in the world and employs former US diplomats, warned the largest EU countries about the emergency on 21 August, and invited them to support Washington in case it decided to declare Kosovo's independence unilaterally, thus bypassing the UN. Otherwise, according to ICG, another bloodbath could take place in the Balkans. The ICG's view can sound opportunistic, especially because since the armed intervention in 1999 decided Bill Clinton's democratic government, the stance of the US has always been in favour of Kosovo's independence. However, the report highlights the real risk that guns could be back firing in the Balkans. If Kosovo declared its independence without a mediator, Serbia could take over some territories north of the Ibar river, prompting the last standing Serbian people to flee the province.

Unilateralism and self-defense. Indeed the time frame for an agreement is shrinking. 'Kosovo could become independent even without a UN resolution', says Agim Ceku, Prime Minister in the transition government, in an interview to German daily Die Welt on 16 August. 'Our objective is independence: it's the only realistic solution in the region, to be done in accord with the international community. We hope that after 10 December, when a report will be presented to the UN Security Council, we will be able to declare our independence with the support of other countries', said Ceku, 'all the better if the UN will make a resolution. We don't accept a partition of Kosovo, it would be betraying the multi-ethnic principles. It's not true that the Serbs are not safe in Kosovo: this is Belgrade's propaganda'. Since the start of August, for the first time since the Nato intervention against Serbia and the beginning of the UN administration of Kosovo, the Serbian government has demanded to send its troops to the province to safeguard Serbian citizens living there, who are victims of daily violence by Albanians and not defended by the police of the transition government, which is in the hands of the Albanians themselves. Meanwhile, in the same grim fashion of the last fifteen years in the Balkans, Serbs in Kosovo said that they have reorganised themselves in self-defense militias. The situation does not look simple at all, and time is running out.