Belgrade and Pristina should be given more time if they fail to reach an agreement on Kosovo by December 10, when the UN is due to deliver a report on the province, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday.

Representatives from Serbia and Kosovo will hold direct talks without mediators in New York on September 28 within the framework of the UN General Assembly session, a Russian diplomat said Thursday.

In recent days, Serbian officials have offered mixed messages about how Serbia would react if Kosovo declared independence. Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic told London's "Financial Times" that Serbia would not threaten military action, although he said a declaration of independence by Kosovo would open a "Pandora's box" in the region.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says U.S. missile defense and Kosovo are two "red-line" issues where the Kremlin will not agree to compromise.

The senior United Nations envoy to Kosovo announced today that municipal, assembly and mayoral elections will be held on 17 November in the Serbian province administered by the United Nations since 1999.

International mediators say Serbian and ethnic Albanian officials have pledged to refrain from statements that could jeopardize negotiations on the future status of Serbia's breakaway Kosovo province.

Kosovo's Prime Minister Agim Ceku says the Serbian province will declare independence unilaterally if current negotiations on its status do not "open a way for us."

Two of the leading politicians involved in the ongoing talks on the future of Kosovo noted recently that the discussions are likely to lead nowhere. There are perhaps some other basic points regarding Kosovo that have become obscured in the heated debates of recent months and are worth recalling.

What future for Kosovo? Early last spring, it seemed the formally Serbian province populated mostly by ethnic Albanians was poised to gain full independence, in accordance with a plan by United Nations envoy Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president.

An adviser to the Serbian prime minister warned Thursday that Kosovo could become "a unique NATO state" if its status is decided on the basis of the Ahtisaari plan.

The six-nation Contact Group mediating the future status of Serbia's Albanian-dominated province of Kosovo will gather in London Thursday, the British Foreign Office said Tuesday.

Serbia is ready to grant broad autonomy to Kosovo, but only if the province remains under Serbian sovereignty, the president of a parliamentary commission said Monday.