The European Union is close to full unity in support for Kosovo’s drive for independence, with only Cyprus insisting that sovereignty for the Serbian province must be backed by a UN resolution, ministers said on Monday.

Kosovo Albanian leaders said they will immediately start talks with their Western backers on steps leading to a declaration of independence, which a senior official said would be “much earlier than May”.

“From today, Kosovo begins consultations with key international partners to coordinate the next steps to a declaration of independence,” Skender Hyseni, spokesman of Kosovo’s negotiating team with Serbia, said in Pristina.

“There is virtual unity on Kosovo,” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told reporters ahead of EU talks in Brussels. “Apart from Cyprus, which has enormous problems with this... all other countries are going in this direction,” said Luxembourg’s Jean Asselborn.

ETHNIC MAKEUP

Serbs were a majority until they were defeated by the Ottoman Empire. Over the next 500 years many left while the Albanians, converts to Islam, grew in number. Mutual expulsions and migration from Albania in the early 20th century changed Kosovo’s makeup. Today, 2 million Albanians form 90 percent of the population. Some 100,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo, many in scattered enclaves protected by NATO.

POLITICS & ECONOMY

Landlocked and poor apart from mineral deposits, Kosovo was an autonomous region of the Socialist Yugoslav Federation and had effective self-government in 1974. But ethnic tensions escalated in the 1980s as Yugoslavia began to crumble and economic conditions deteriorated. Populist Slobodan Milosevic used Serb nationalism as a springboard to power in 1989, restricting Albanian rights in education and local government. Strikes, protests and violence led to Belgrade declaring a state of emergency in 1990, sending in the Yugoslav army and police.

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