The UN Security Council has rescheduled a Thursday consultation on a West-sponsored draft resolution on Kosovo's future status to Friday, the council's president announced Thursday.
"At the request of the cosponsors, the discussion on the (draft) Kosovo resolution was postponed" to Friday morning at 11:00 a.m. ( 1500 GMT), said China's UN ambassador Wang Guangya, the council's president for July.
The 15-member council is to discuss the latest text formally introduced on late Tuesday by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Belgium.
The document calls for further negotiations between Belgrade and Kosovo's ethic Albanians during a 120-day period but drops a previous reference to an automatic road to internationally supervised independence if the talks fail.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the cosponsors will make a decision on their next step after the informal consultation during which council members, including Russia, are supposed to clarify their positions on the issue.
The cosponsors have yet to decide whether to call a vote on the text, which has been "put in blue," a UN jargon meaning a Security Council vote could be called within 24 hours.
Khalilzad on Wednesday urged Russia to play a "constructive role," or "Russia will be responsible for pushing this process outside the council."
But Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin dismissed the latest text which went through slight changes to the one he had rejected on Monday, when he warned "the chances are zero" for the draft to be passed through the council.
Kosovo, a breakaway province of Serbia, has been under UN administration since 1999, after a NATO bombing campaign helped stop Serb forces from a crackdown on the province's ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the population.
Source: Xinhua
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