In an op-ed published in Prague daily Pravo, the Czech historian and Balkans expert argues that incorporation of Kosovo’s northern, Serb-inhabited municipalities into Serbia proper should not be ruled out as an alternative solution to Kosovo’s status problem.

“The time has obviously come to consider Kosovo’s partition,” Pelikan wrote.

“Realistically, it [supervised independence] was decided on eight years ago. Back then it was clear the international protectorate was only a transitional step toward the province’s separation from Serbia,” he said.

“A force that will prevent the long-term unification of Kosovo, Albania and a part of Macedonia does not exist,” Pelikan warned.

Pelikan criticized the Serbian side for its “sentimental, instead of realistic” approach to Kosovo, while much of the Serbian political elite, in his opinion, deliberately refrains from wondering what the return of Kosovo might entail.

In Pelikan’s opinion, it would bring with it huge economic losses, new conflict with Kosovo’s Albanians, and halted modernization processes.  

“The current phase in the process of solving Kosovo’s future status once again brings forward the principle of maintaining existing borders while creating new states in the territories of former federations,” Pelikan said.

In his opinion, it was precisely this “strict insistence” on the principle that prolonged and complicated the breakup of former Yugoslavia and created “an unviable Bosnian state.”

“Granting Kosovo independence will do away with this principle, since that territory never enjoyed statehood, but was an autonomous area instead. Annexing the northern municipalities, with a Kosovo Serb majority, should not be ruled out as an alternative,” Pelikan suggests.

“Real goal”

In a report from Belgrade, Reuters quotes analysts and suggests  “Serbia plans to defy the West and partition its province of Kosovo if it wins independence this year”.

“And in the opinion of some Western experts, partition, a land swap or a population transfer might better reflect the realities and wishes of the ethnic groups involved than the multi-ethnic blueprint the West is so dogmatic about,” the agency says.

"The elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge is that Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo don't really want to live together in the same state," professor Steven Meyer of the National Defense University in Washington said.

"Whether we like it or not, that should be respected."

If Kosovo were allowed "a vote on what people want and who they want to live with, one would get a very different picture to what is now pushed" by the United States, the European Union and special UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari, he told Reuters.

The northern slice of Kosovo above the River Ibar is home to some 40,000 Serbs. About 60,000 more live in isolated enclaves to the south, surrounded by two million Albanians.

NATO allies and the European Union reject partition, but on the ground, “Kosovo is already partitioned.”

In terms of administration, telephone links, water and electricity, the north has no ties to the Kosovo capital, Priština.

Kosovo laws and UN decrees go unheeded, and Serbs continue to use Serbian number plates and the dinar rather than the UN-imposed “KS” plates and euro, the agency says.

Meyer said Ahtisaari's plan "will institutionalize ethnically based municipalities on both sides", creating the base "for the Serb areas ... to declare their own independence".

Kosovo's northern triangle has been a no-go zone for Albanian leaders since the war. Plain-clothes police from Serbia patrol the divided city of Mitrovica at its gate.

Amitai Etzioni, professor at George Washington University, says UN efforts to create a multi-ethnic state have been "a complete failure, unwise and authoritarian".

"The ethnic groups are as far apart as before the war," he told Reuters. "We need separation."

"If Kosovo becomes independent, Serbs in the north will declare their own separation from Kosovo," said Oliver Ivanović, a Kosovo Serb politician.

International Crisis Group’s special Balkans advisor James Lyon believes Serbia has already made plans, Reuters reports, quoting his recent blog entry at B92.

“For now Serbia is trying to delay a UN decision on Ahtisaari's recommendation that Kosovo be granted independence, under EU supervision.”

“Serbia wants its ally Russia, which has veto power on the UN Security Council, to stall the process so the Albanians lose patience and declare independence unilaterally, triggering a Serb exodus from the southern enclaves to the northern haven,” Reuters repots.

Officially, Serbia is not interested in partitioning Kosovo, provided it is not forced to give up 15 percent of its territory, and lose land steeped in Serb history and myth.

But Belgrade, privately, knows it cannot recover Kosovo and its "real goal" is partition, Lyon said.