Following 14 months of fruitless talks between representatives of Kosovo and Serbia, the UN's special representative on Kosovo, former Finnish president, Martti Ahtisaari, has finally recommended full independence for the province.
In a report to be debated in the Security Council next month Mr Ahtisaari acknowledges an insurmountable impasse between the two sides and proposes that independence should be supervised "for an initial period" by the EU assisted by Nato forces and European police. Continued uncertainty about Kosovo's status would be destabilising for the province and regionally, and neither full Serbian control or autonomy within Serbia are tenable, his report says.
Mr Ahtisaari, importantly, also insists on the creation of a "multiethnic society" with guarantees for minority representation in the Kosovo Assembly. The small Kosovo Serb community should have a "high degree of control over its own affairs", the report says. To date majority Albanian leaders have singularly failed to reassure the community it has a place in the new Kosovo.
Mr Ahtisaari's unsurprising conclusions have provoked outrage from Serbia whose President Boris Tadic has responded that any form of independence for Kosovo is "unacceptable". Serbia says it will never accept the amputation of what it calls its cultural heartland. And its opposition is echoed by Security Council veto-wielding member, Russia.
Russia's likely veto of a UN resolution backing independence will mean Security Council deadlock and is likely both to enrage the 90-per-cent Albanian majority and increase the probability that Kosovo may opt for a unilateral declaration of independence. With unofficial help from Serbia the result could be a potentially violent attempt by the vulnerable Kosovo Serb community to create a de facto partition in the north of the province around Mitrovica and a mass exodus of Serbs from the south. The status quo will certainly not hold for long.
Both the US and UK might well be willing to recognise such a new state, but the EU as a whole is divided with some members unwilling to impose a solution against Serb wishes. And with the EU set to take control of the province the handling of the Ahtisaari report is a real test of its diplomacy. Serbia, for whom the prospect of a route to EU membership is hugely important, must be persuaded to accept, however grudgingly and under protest, that Kosovan independence, with strong guarantees on the rights of the Serb community, is inevitable and that such acceptance will open doors to it. There simply is no other way that does not mean a road back to war.