To mental fortune-tellers Kosovo is a good pick. This Serbian enclave, awaiting its status resolution for eight UN-administered years, has undergone many twists and turns, alternately nearing and alienating it from independence. The aspiration of Kosovar Albanians, seen as representing the verbal tug-of-war between separatists and a country fighting for its territorial integrity elsewhere in Europe, has seen many international communities and organisations becoming involved and taking an active role in the Kosovo “question”.

The controversy, verging on impasse, inherent to this stand-off has seen the parties buying time by putting back deadlines from final-final to interim. Paradoxically, a December 10 deadline that finished with an impasse result may have opened doors for a resolution in the near future.

The “troika”, the US, European Union and Russia team tasked with brokering an agreement between Serbia and Kosovo over the past four months, reported to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on December 10 that Serbia and Kosovo had failed to reach an agreement. The Kosovo leadership remained resolute in its request for full independence, the troika said, whereas Serbia was just as defiant that Kosovo should remain within its boundaries.

The Kosovo and Serbia support teams have been just as determined. What is more, the statements of those supporting Kosovo, the US, EU, and Nato, and those of Russia, who is standing with Serbia, contain a hint of determination that infer a final solution to the problem is just around the corner. Maybe even as early as next year.

Now that the recalcitrance of the sides has been recorded, the international community has hinted it was about time the Kosovo conflict became history through resolute external interference. The many calls from the international community have recognised that despite Kosovo and Serbia being offered diverse and efficient models to resolve the problem (UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari’s supervised independence model or Serbia’s Hong-Kong model for loose independence), they would not yield anything because of a lack of political will for the solutions. Hence the need for brokerage through new means and the busy agenda of international institutions with a position on the issue.

That the issue of Kosovo’s status has entered a new phase of development is indicative from the multilateral change in tone on the issue. The latest international statements ran as follows.

Kosovo said it had started concrete preparations to declare independence “sometime next year”. Serbia also assumed a harder line, saying it was ready to resort to a range of measures to retain Kosovo within its borders. Serbia said is was prepared to go as far as imposing an economic embargo on Kosovo and cutting diplomatic relations with all countries that recognised Kosovo’s independence.

The EU also gave its immediate, though again inconclusive, reaction that as there was a lack of alternative solutions, Kosovo should follow Ahtisaari’s model for supervised independence. The EU foreign ministers’ summit on December 10 announced no official position but it was made clear that the majority of EU member states supported the supervised independence prospect for the Serbian enclave. As the international media reported, quoting attending foreign ministers, the sole country to openly defy Kosovo as a new state was Cyprus, though several other nations, Spain, Slovakia, Greece and Romania, were also likely to join the chorus of opponents for fear that Kosovo’s declaration would trigger separatist movements within their own countries.

In a statement on December 10, Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin was resolute in talking down this possibility. In a foreign ministry statement consistent with the main EU line, Kalfin said: “To Bulgaria it is important that the EU be resolute in declaring that the Kosovo case is unique and it in no way creates a precedent.”

He also said the EU had a key role in retaining peace in the region through a new political process.

“This new political process based on the EU unity should have three main dimensions – the future of Kosovo, the EU policy towards Serbia and the retention of stability and security in the region,” Kalfin said.

The US also reiterated that it remained positive on the prospect of Kosovo as a separate state. In a recent statement, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said such a development would be in unison with “logic”. Russia remained firm in its backing for Serbia as it remains apprehensive of further territorial fragmenting in Europe.

“The unilaterally proclaimed independence of Kosovo and the illegal recognition of that independence will naturally have consequences,” Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said as quoted by Interfax news agency. Those moves would “trigger a chain reaction” in the Balkans and elsewhere.

Security being a top priority, the EU brokered the idea of sending peace-keeping forces to the province. Nato also announced it would keep its troops in Kosovo for fear of an outbreak of violence in the UN-administered region.

Regardless of their conflicting stands on the expediency of diplomacy, both Kosovo and Serbia are united in refraining from aggression. In the wake of this new definitive phase of Kosovo talks, both sides officially pledged that violence had no place in the province. Despite the individual outbreaks of violence between UN troops and ethnic Serbs reported in border regions over the past week, violence is unlikely to break out.

As Kosovo has reached a dead-end in terms of negotiations, the role of the UN is said to be crucial. The UN, the party to have administered the province since the 1999 bombings, will have a dual-pronged role in the final stages of the dispute. On the one hand, the United Nations Security Council is convening on December 19 to consider Kosovo in light of the new developments and the report of the troika. On the other hand, UN Secretary-General Ki-Moon is due to give his position on Kosovo before mid-January. His positive opinion should give the final resolve to Kosovo to declare unilateral independence. The Kosovo leadership said it will be awaiting the UN’s stance before proceeding, if at all, to a definitive declaration of independence.

The dual-call of the UN is hardly likely to give a definitive solution to the current arrangement on the Kosovo chess board. Yet together with the same message coming from other international players, there may well be a solution.

Unlike previously, when Kosovo regarded independence as a prospect that it would go for with or without international support, it has now said it would declare independence on official, unequivocal approbation from the EU, Nato and the US. Kosovo is also fresh out of elections, which despite their low turnout, gave the independence prospect a new impetus as the winning party had made independence a key part of its campaign.

Kosovo is prepared in terms of internal politics. And economically. Kosovo is not afraid of economic sanctions from Serbia. Kosovo is still an economy of the closed type, which means it is still relatively self-sufficient. The volume of its imports, although growing, are still at a very low level and Kosovo is growingly shifting the share of imports from mostly Serbian to mostly Macedonian. It is still dependent on Serbia for electricity, but Serbia is dependent on Europe for its gas supplies, which makes the prospect for an enduring power blackout during wintertime improbable.

With international moods growing more openly in favour of Kosovo, the UN-administered province’s declaration of independence is not a matter of if but when.