PRISTINA, Serbia, May 11 (UPI) -- NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer arrived Thursday for talks with ethnic-Albanians on the future status of Serbia's Kosovo province.
Scheffer met with leaders of Kosovo's ethnic-Albanians and Serb minority officials and Serbian Orthodox church dignitaries to see whether deadlocked talks on Kosovo's future could be salvaged, the Belgrade Beta news agency reported.
Serbs and ethnic-Albanians have been conducting U.N.-led talks to decide who will govern Kosovo once U.N. civilian and NATO personnel leave.
Four rounds of the talks, which began in February, produced no results and the fifth round is scheduled May 23 in Austria.
Kosovo leaders of the 90 percent ethnic-Albanian province publicly advocate independence of the Serbian government in Belgrade, while the Serbs demand high-level autonomy for their enclaves in Kosovo.
Formally part of Serbia, Kosovo has been under U.N. administration and NATO protection since 1999, when NATO air attacks stopped reported terror by military and police troops of the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic against ethnic-Albanian separatists.
