Serbia and Russia demand urgent UN meeting on Kosovo: EU envoy

Serbia and Russia have demanded an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Kosovo's moves toward independence, EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero Waldner said Wednesday.

The anticipated declaration of independence could come as soon as Sunday.

Ferrero Waldner along with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Dmitrij Rupel, the foreign minister for Slovenia which currently holds the European Union presidency, are set to meet Wednesday with Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov, with Kosovo high on their agenda.

Russia on Wednesday expressed hopes that an urgent UN meeting on the status of Kosovo would take place "in the coming days," the foreign ministry's special representative to the Balkans Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Moscow backs Serbia's position that majority ethnic Albanian province's decision to breakaway from Belgrade would be in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1244.

That resolution, coming at the end of Kosovo's 1998-1999 war, gave the disputed province "substantial autonomy" under Serbian sovereignty and put in place a UN mission and NATO-led peacekeepers. (AFP)