BELGRADE - Serbia will never give up its sovereignty over the breakaway Kosovo province even to gain membership in the European Union, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said Saturday.
"The government is united and decisive in its stance that Serbia will never accept extortion over Kosovo for European integration," Kostunica said in an interview with the state-run Tanjug news agency.
Kostunica, a fierce opponent of Kosovo's independence, said there has been no "examples in the history of Europe that one state cedes 15 percent of its territory for any kind of concessions of prizes."
"If something like that was useful, good and possible, I believe someone would have already thought of that," said Kostunica, who was re-elected prime minister to the post on Tuesday after more than three-months of bickering between Serbian pro-European parties.
Though still technically Serbian territory, Kosovo has been run by a UN mission since NATO bombing drove out Belgrade-controlled forces in 1999 over a brutal crackdown on the province's ethnic Albanian majority.
UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari has proposed internationally supervised independence for Kosovo, a move backed by the United States, EU and Kosovo Albanian leaders but adamantly opposed by Serbia and its traditional ally Russia.
The UN Security Council is due to debate a resolution based on Ahtisaari's proposal later this month, but Russia has threatened to wield its Security Council veto to block any resolution unacceptable to Serbia.
Brussels froze reapproachment talks with Belgrade a year ago over Serbia's failure to hand over war crimes suspects, notably former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, to the UN war crimes court.
Kostunica said Serbia would take all "necessary measures to finalise" cooperation with the UN war crimes tribunal in order to continue integration talks with the EU.
"Of course, it is our goal to fulfill our obligations towards the Tribunal since it is in the interest of our country" Kostunica said.
Following the formation of pro-European government in Serbia last week, the EU's enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn said that Brussels was ready to resume the talks "very soon, once the government programme is ... rigorously implemented concerning EU integration and cooperation."
05/19/2007 17:54 GMT