The foreign ministers of the EU's 27 countries met on the fringes of an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday evening to resume talks on the Kosovo situation.
The basic position remains the same, we support the adoption of a UN Security Council resolution as soon as possible, Denmark's Per Stig Moller told the press.
The EU insists that such a formal resolution is the only way to resolve the status quo, despite Washington's hints that it might support a unilateral declaration of Kosovo's independent if Russia blocked the UN resolution.
There is no other way to resolve the Kosovo status issue but with a Security Council resolution, the Balkan news agency DTT-NET quoted EU envoy for Kosovo Stephan Lehne as saying. If Kosovo Albanian leaders took matters into their hands, that would be a big step backwards, he added.
Unilateral moves would not help the removal of the remaining obstacles but create new ones, Lehne said after meeting Kosovo President Fatmir Seidiu on Thursday.
"If we don't have a UN resolution that the EU states can cluster around, we may have a repeat of the situation with (the invasion of) Iraq, when some countries went one way and some the other way," Associated Press quoted Lars Erik Forsberg of the EU enlargement directorate as saying.
The UN resolution would authorise the EU to take over from the UN the administrative and police supervision of Kosovo, as envisaged by UN negotiator Martti Ahtisaari's plan.
Russia on Wednesday rejected an amended draft UN resolution which envisages postponing for 120 days a decision on Kosovo's final status in order to give Serbian and Albanian negotiators a new opportunity to agree on the province's future.