The international troika of US, EU and Russian mediators said on Saturday that they had opened new talks on the future status of the Serbian breakaway Kosovo province to seek consensus between Serbia and ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo.

"The visits to Pristina and Belgrade mark the opening of a new round of talks on the status of Kosovo," the US representative of the troika Frank Wisner was quoted as saying by the Serbian official Tanjug news agency.

"We have used the meetings (in Pristina) to hear the views of the Kosovo president and their negotiating team which are important and to whom we have explained our mission," Wisner told reporters in Pristina, following talks with representatives of NATO-led Kosovo peacekeepers, UN mission in Kosovo and the Kosovo negotiating team.

The international troika of Wisner, EU envoy Wolfgang Ischinger and Russian representative Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko met Serbian President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica in Belgrade on Friday, before heading to Kosovo on Saturday for talks with top officials there.

The troika mediators, who are entrusted by the international Contact Group of six major powers to lead new talks, are to report back to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon by Dec. 10 on the progress of the talks.

New talks were agreed after Russia's veto threat forced the West to step back from a UN Security Council vote in July on a US-EU draft resolution on Kosovo and try to resolve the issue in a fresh round of talks over the next 120 days led by the Contact Group of US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

Kosovo, which legally remains a Serbian province, has been under UN administration since 1999 under the UN Security Council Resolution 1244. The predominantly Albanians of the 2 million population demand outright independence instead of maximum autonomy offered by Serbia.

Following UN-led 13-month fruitless talks between Serbia and Kosovo, UN envoy on Kosovo talks Martti Ahtisaari presented in March a proposal recommending internationally supervised independence for Kosovo. The proposal received strong support from the United States, most EU countries as well as Kosovo's authorities, but was rejected by Serbia and its traditional ally Russia.

"We are here as a troika to build bridges and to try to find ways to reach a consensus. We will agree to everything that the participants agree. We are not here to come out with suggestions, rather to obtain a consensus with our ideas," Wisner said.

Russia's representative Botsan-Kharchenko said that the troika's mission will be exceptionally difficult, but that it is very important that both sides have pledged to cooperate.

The troika operates under the mandate of the UN secretary general, meaning that the process of defining the status of Kosovo remains within the UN Security Council, Botsan-Kharchenko said.

EU's envoy Ischinger said that the future of Kosovo is of the greatest importance for all members of the European Union.

"We take seriously the process that was initiated in Belgrade and which continues in Pristina. We appreciate the good will of the Kosovo president and the Pristina negotiating team to work with us and we are pleased that we received similar assurances in Belgrade from their leaders. This is a good start for something that is not an easy mission for the troika," Ischinger said.

Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu said he expects constructive and serious talks, but reiterated that Pristina's position is that the independence and territorial integrity of Kosovo is non-negotiable.

Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku said before the meeting that he would request the troika to have the issue of people who went missing during the war in Kosovo be one of the main topics at upcoming talks on Kosovo's status.

"We will not negotiate about independence. I am assuring you that one of the first and main topics will be shedding light of the fate of the missing," said Ceku.

On Sunday, the troika is scheduled to meet in Pristina with representatives of the Kosovo Serbs who number only 130,000 of Kosovo's nearly two million population.

(Xinhua News Agency August 13, 2007)