Kosovo should declare unilateral independence on November 28, the prime minister of the UN-administered Serbian province said today.
Agim Ceku said Kosovo's parliament should push ahead with a declaration of independence from Belgrade because of a lack of movement at the UN.
November 28 marks Albanian independence day, a date also celebrated by Kosovo's 90% Albanian majority. Mr Ceku said the Kosovo parliament should set the date in a resolution after his return from Washington next week, where he is due to meet the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.
"It is a day of celebration," he told reporters after meeting Kosovo's UN governor, Joachim Ruecker. "The United Nations has failed to act."
Mr Ceku has made such statements before, mainly to placate restive Kosovo Albanians who are increasingly impatient at the country being run by UN bureaucrats. Observers said Mr Ceku was having to shore up his steadily eroding credibility by maintaining that independence was just around the corner.
The west has been trying to push through a plan drawn up by the UN special envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, that sets Kosovo on the path towards independence at the UN security council, but Russia, Serbia's traditional ally, has repeatedly blocked a UN resolution.
Faced with a threatened Russian veto, the west today put off consideration of the resolution yet again.
"We regret ... that it has been impossible to secure such a resolution in the United Nations security council," the French ambassador, Jean-Marc de La Sablière, said in a statement after a meeting of the council.
Moscow rejected the latest draft UN resolution, which called for another 120 days of Serb-Albanian talks and would mandate the EU to take over from the UN mission. Russia said it amounted to independence by the back door.
Kosovo has been run by the UN since 1999, when a Nato air campaign forced out Serbian troops that were killing and expelling Albanians in a two-year war with guerrillas.
The US has indicated that it would support a unilateral declaration, but the 27-member EU is divided. Britain has been a strong backer of independence, but others such as Greece and Spain are opposed.
Ms Rice yesterday again said Washington was fully committed to achieving independence for Kosovo, despite Russia's opposition. She told reporters that Kosovo would get its independence "one way or another", without specifying whether the US was prepared to recognise Kosovo's independence unilaterally. But even if the US does recognise Kosovo, it has little leverage to bring along the EU countries, apart from Britain.
In a report to the security council earlier this month, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, warned that if the province's "status remains undefined, there was a real risk that the progress achieved by the UN and the provisional institutions in Kosovo can begin to unravel", amid reports that former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were regrouping.
Kosovo has been a source of tension between the west and Moscow, which fears that it could set a precedent for its own separatist problems in Nagorno-Karabakh and other Russian regions. Should Kosovo press ahead with a unilateral declaration of independence, relations between the west and Russia could become further inflamed.
· The following clarification was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, September 3 2007. Nagorno-Karabakh is not a Russian region, it is in Azerbaijan.