We shall not express our position on the issue of Kosovo at this stage as we believe that it is important to reach agreement between the two sides and negotiators on the basic elements for Kosovo's future, the American told reporters after he completed his two-day visit to Serbia where he held talks with Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic and dignitaries of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Wiesner said that it was necessary to reach agreement on a system for the protection of minorities in Kosovo, which used to be the southern Serbian province before the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). Currently, about 90 percent of the two-million population in Kosovo are local Albanians with the Serb community numbering 100,000.
Wiesner also urged Belgrade and Pristina to show more flexibility at the next accelerated stage of negotiations.
The next round of the talks is scheduled for August in Vienna.
At the first top-level talks between Serbian and Kosovo highest-ranking officials in Vienna earlier this week little progress was made. Kosovo Albanians insist on independence and refuse any notion of having any formal ties with Serbia after the regime of Serbian autocrat Slobodan Milosevic committed atrocities against the local population in the 1990s until the 1999 NATO-led air strikes which drove out the Serbian forces from the province.
Wiesner said that headway had been made in comparison to the situation in 1999, although much remained to be done.
He reiterated guidelines of the Kosovo Contact Group which ruled out any division of Kosovo, and said the United States was also against any move which could lead to the partition of the province.
He called on Kosovo Serbs to integrate in the Kosovo institutions and urged Belgrade to show restraint in its relations with Serbs in the province.
Wiesner, who departed from Belgrade to Pristina, expressed satisfaction with Monday's talks in Vienna describing them as historic given that it was the first face-to-face meeting between Serbian and Kosovo heads of state or government.
Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic on Wednesday also received his Slovene counterpart Dimitrij Rupel who proposed the establishment of a contact group of countries that would support Serbian authorities and their views on the negotiations on Kosovo.
"I proposed that a meeting of regional partnership be organised with countries of the Visegrad Gorup (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) plus Slovenia and Austria and set up a group of friends of Serbia," Rupel said after meeting Draskovic.
I believe that we are now in a situation when more space for the Serbian position should be ensured so that Serbia may be able to explain its position," said the Slovene minister who was on a one-day visit to Belgrade.