Below is an article published by International Herald Tribune:

A top U.S. diplomat on Monday urged European governments to agree quickly on granting Kosovo supervised independence under a UN plan or risk seeing the Serbian province descend into violence.

Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried said the ethnic Albanian majority's desire for clarity about the future could no longer be denied. The region has been run by the United Nations since the 1998 NATO-led air war that halted Slobodan Milosevic's bloody crackdown on Albanian separatists.

"The status quo in Kosovo is not sustainable," Fried told journalists at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin.

"We can't keep going on like this, with Kosovo in limbo. After eight years of rule and administration by the United Nations they deserve more clarity about their future and further delay will destabilize the situation."

The UN special envoy for Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, has come up with a plan that addresses concerns about the safety of the remaining Serb minority in Kosovo and provides the best chance for a peaceful resolution, Fried said.

Several EU members - Slovakia, Romania and Greece - have expressed reservations. Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto power, has said it opposes any solution imposed over the objections of Serbia.

Fried said the United States favored "supervised independence" and stressed that it hoped for a consensus on the Security Council.

"The prospect of resolving Kosovo's final status without a Security Council resolution is grim," he said.

"One way or another the status quo will end," he said, "and it will either end through a controlled, organized process that gives guarantees to the Kosovo Serbs and the maximum of transparency and an orderly process, or it will be uncontrolled and much more violent."

Kosovo Albanians have criticized the plan for not going far enough. While they would be granted many of the trappings of statehood, such as a flag and an army, in some respects they would remain under the supervision of European Union officials.

Serbia, meanwhile, is adamant that it must keep a territory that is home to many important Serbian religious and historical sites.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO secretary general, said Monday that the Security Council should not rush a decision on Kosovo's future, but he too cautioned against delay. De Hoop Scheffer and senior NATO officials were inspecting the 16,500 member security force in Kosovo before a Security Council meeting Tuesday, at which delegates for the first time discuss the UN plan for independence.

"The Security Council will come to a just conclusion," said De Hoop Scheffer. "On one hand, I think we should not expect a rush, on the other hand we should not expect unnecessary delay - no rush, no unnecessary delay in the Security Council."

Meanwhile, Germany has sent an additional 550 troops to Kosovo amid fears of an increase in violence as negotiations on the province's status reach a critical stage, Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told the German daily Die Welt.

"We are worried that the situation could become more dangerous during the talks on Kosovo's political future," Jung was quoted as saying in the Monday edition. "Because of this, we have sent an additional ORF battalion to Kosovo," he said, referring to an Operational Reserve Force.

A spokesman for the Defense Ministry said the roughly 550-strong deployment brought Germany's total contingent in Kosovo to 2,923 troops. He said the new battalion, which arrived in mid-March, was scheduled to stay in the province until the end of April, but could remain longer if the situation on the ground warranted it.