( Reuters ) - Russia will accept a partition of Serbia's Kosovo province if that is what both Belgrade and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority agree to, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.
Asked if Russia would agree to partition, Lavrov said: "Negotiations are continuing with the mediation of the troika of Russia, the European Union and the United States. The aim is to help the sides reach an agreement, and we will support whatever it is on which they reach agreement."
"But the aim of the mediators is to help the sides to reach agreement .... and not to force a particular solution on them," Lavrov told reporters at a news briefing.
The province, part of Serbia but with a majority ethnic Albanian population, has been run by the United Nations and NATO for the past eight years. Kosovo Albanians want full independence, but Belgrade has refused to give them that.
Russia, a Serbian ally, opposes a Western-backed plan to grant Kosovo independence from Belgrade. The troika format was created after Moscow had blocked the independence plan in the United Nations.
Lavrov's comments come a day after a fresh round of troika talks opened in Vienna.
In an interview published on Friday in Der Standard newspaper, the EU's envoy to the troika, Wolfgang Ischinger, said an agreed deal would be "a thousand times better than any unilateral solution".
"But realistically the chances of achieving this after all that has happened are rather slim," he said.
Kosovo Albanians have said if there is no deal agreed, they will declare independence unilaterally. That would present European states with the dilemma of whether to recognise Kosovo as a sovereign state.
"It would be a disaster if we allow this issue to divide," the EU, Ischinger said in the interview
In Kosovo's capital Pristina, Prime Minister Agim Ceku said he still hoped to achieve independence by the end of the year.
"We are ready, in the absence of a U.N. Security Council resolution ....to declare independence and ask for recognition by the EU and the United States," he said.
Partition of Kosovo would most likely involve splitting off a northern slice of the province where a large part of the ethnic Serbian minority live.
Both Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians have said they oppose partition, but they have also shown no sign of reaching agreement on the central issue of independence for Kosovo.
Ischinger said this month a partition of Kosovo could be contemplated if both sides agreed to it, but before Friday Russia had not made its position on the issue public.
Kosovo is home to two million Albanians and 100,000 Serbs, many of whom live in the border area adjoining Serbia.