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.

The Serbian government says it has adopted a list of proposed rules for negotiations on the future status of Kosovo. Government officials say the proposed guidelines were sent Friday to the ambassadors of the six countries that make up the Contact Group.

Belgrade and Pristina plan to hold another round of negotiations on the status of Kosovo late next week, a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday.

Serbia's minister for Kosovo confirmed that Belgrade has been receiving off-the-record proposals that it form a confederation with its predominantly Albanian province, but said such an agreement was out of the question.

Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic says a compromise solution can be found in settling the future of the disputed Serbian province of Kosovo.

Russia is against setting artificial timetables to decide Kosovo's status and attempts to predetermine the outcome, the Foreign Ministry's spokesman said Tuesday. Mikhail Kamynin said status talks could start soon "if they are thoroughly prepared by the Contact Group."

The European Union's foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana, has named German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger to represent the bloc in negotiations on the future status of Kosovo.

Amid a flurry of diplomatic activity regarding the future status of Kosovo, the Bush administration is stressing that it still supports a U.N. plan that would grant provisional independence to the U.N.-administered Serbian province.

The Serbian president said in an interview with Russian media Thursday that there is no link between European Union membership and a solution to the Kosovo problem.

The Serbian parliament has warned the United States and the European Union against recognizing Kosovo's independence without UN consent. Serbian lawmakers passed a resolution late in the day on July 24 promising an "energetic response" against countries that might recognize independence for the mainly ethnic-Albanian province.

Kosovo officials meeting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Monday said they will not declare independence for four months while negotiations about the Kosovo's status are under way.