Yesterday [5 July 2007] UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon warned that democratic progress and Kosovan stability can only be guaranteed by swift action in the plan for independence from Serbia.

Below is an article written by Warren Hoge and published by the New York Times:

Progress in stabilizing Kosovo will be reversed unless there is swift action on a United Nations plan for its independence from Serbia, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a report to the Security Council made public on Thursday.

The Council is to take up the subject on Monday, and efforts have resumed to overcome objections from Russia, which supports Serbia’s insistence that Kosovo, a breakaway province, must remain a part of it.

The Council is considering a resolution calling for a European Union-managed independence for Kosovo, a plan that has been revised three times to try to meet Russian demands. Under the latest redrafting, the plan would go into effect 120 days after passage of the measure.

But Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador here, said last month that any plan that resulted in independence for Kosovo was unacceptable. Mr. Churkin has strongly hinted that if the resolution is put to a vote, Russia will veto it.

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since a NATO bombing campaign drove out Serbian forces, which had been conducting a brutal crackdown on the overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian population.

The plan was drawn up by Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, the United Nations mediator, who presented it to the Council in March saying that 13 months of direct negotiations between the sides had reached an impasse.

Britain, France and the United States, sponsors of the resolution, have warned that ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the population of Kosovo, are growing restive and may declare unilateral independence if the United Nations does not act.

Ambassadors postponed further consideration of the resolution last month in the hope that the meeting on Monday in Kennebunkport, Me., between President Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, would produce movement on Kosovo. Those talks focused instead almost entirely on missile-defense systems.

In his report, Secretary General Ban said there had been “significant strides in the establishment and consolidation of democratic and provisional institutions of self-government” in Kosovo.

But he complained that Kosovo Serbian political leaders were conducting “a near-total boycott” of these institutions and were being encouraged in their obstructionism by the government in Belgrade.

“While Kosovo’s overall progress is encouraging,” he said, “if its future status remains undefined, there is a real risk that the progress achieved by the United Nations and the provisional institutions in Kosovo can begin to unravel.”