Overall view of the first postwar talks on Kosovo between Serbs and Albanians held at the Federal Chancellery in Vienna

VIENNA, October 14 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The first face-to-face talks between Serbian and Kosovan leaders began in Vienna Tuesday, October 14, four years after a bloody war that left thousands of people dead and hundred thousand others displaced.

The talks, opened by Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, were attended by Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic and Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova.

Discussions are due to address emotive issues such as the fate of 3,700 people still missing in Kosovo, mostly ethnic Albanians, and the future of more than 100,000 mainly ethnic Serbs who fled after troops withdrew, said the BBC NewsOnline.

But the meeting, held behind closed doors, is largely symbolic as the contentious issue of Kosovo's final status will not be discussed and as Serbs and ethnic Albanians are still deeply divided over Kosovo, it added.

Serbs claim that Kosovo, now administered by the United Nations since the 1999 NATO bombing campaign to force Serb forces withdraw from the province, is part of Serbia, but the majority ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo wants independence.

‘Path For Dialogue’

However, the U.N.-sponsored meeting marked a watershed in the Balkans where ethnic Albanian leaders from Kosovo have not held talks with Serbian officials from Belgrade since the NATO bombing campaign, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The talks "show that there is a path for a dialogue, which is possible even between former enemies," Schuessel said at the opening of the talks.

"I hope Vienna will be the place where the participants will be able to make progress towards the European future," he said.

A question mark hung over the meeting right up to the last minute when the Serbian delegation threatened to boycott the talks to protest the absence of a representative of the Serb minority in Kosovo delegation.

The talks also suffered a setback at the weekend when Kosovo Prime Minister Bajram Rexepi refused to travel to Vienna after parliament failed to support his participation in the negotiations.

Rexhepi expressed his belief that the time is "not right" for launching the talks.

Kosovo's U.N. administrator, former Finnish prime minister Harri Holkeri, acknowledged in his remarks at the opening of the talks that "the road to Vienna was not easy".

He urged the leaders from Pristina and Belgrade to show "seriousness" during the negotiations.

A coterie of senior diplomats were on hand at the opening of the Vienna talks to underscore the international community's desire to bring the Kosovo conflict to an end, including E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana, NATO Secretary General George Robertson and his successor Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who currently chairs the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

There were also representatives from the so-called Contact Group for ex-Yugoslavia comprising Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the U.S.

Following the opening ceremony, the delegations were to form working groups to deal with the main issues and continue holding meetings in the coming weeks, alternating between Belgrade and Pristina, U.N. diplomats said.

Kosovo is still fraught with ethnic tension and Belgrade claims that attacks on minority Serbs are carried out with impunity.

Four years after the province came under U.N. control and NATO troops were deployed to keep the peace, only a handful of the 200,000 Serbs and non-Albanians who fled Kosovo have returned to their homes, said AFP.

Some 80,000 remain in enclaves protected by the NATO-led force KFOR, with limited movement in areas dominated by the Albanian majority.

And four years after the war, some 3,700 people, mostly Kosovo Albanians, are still missing from the war.

But Kosovo Albanians suffered unspeakable aggressions at the hand of the Serb forces, pushing the U.N. to call for the indictment of former Serbian President Milan Milutinovic to face war crimes charges as soon as possible.

The last close ally of former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic still in high office, Milutinovic is expected to surrender to the U.N. court to face war crimes charges after his diplomatic immunity expired Sunday, December 29.

He has been indicted, along with Milosevic, for war crimes against ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo during the 1998-99 war there.

The state union of Serbia and Montenegro is made up of two member states, the state of Montenegro and the state of Serbia that includes the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina and the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija which is currently under an international administration in accordance with United Nations Security Council resolution 1244.