Kosovo's top leaders and the UN mission chief agreed on Thursday that parliamentary and local elections in Kosovo would be held in November as envisaged by the law, said reports reaching Belgrade from Kosovo.

Joachim Ruecker, head of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), reached the agreement with the Kosovo Albanian negotiating team headed by Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu, but the exact date would be set at a later time, the Serbian national news agency reported from the Kosovo capital Pristina.

Ruecker and the team said that the two processes of defining status and elections would be underway at the same time, but that priority would be given to resolving the future status of the province.

The Kosovo negotiating team, made up of the province's top leaders, was created to negotiate with Serbia on whether Kosovo should be allowed to formally go its own way.

Kosovo, which legally remains a Serbian province, has been under UN administration since 1999 under the UN Security Council Resolution 1244.

Following 13-month fruitless talks between Serbia and Kosovo, UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari presented in March a proposal recommending internationally supervised independence for Kosovo. The proposal received strong support from the United States, most EU countries as well as Kosovo's authorities, but was rejected by Serbia and its traditional ally Russia.

Last Friday, the United States and five EU member states, faced with the threat of a veto by Russia, decided to give up their attempts to resolve the status of Kosovo in the UN Security Council and to transfer the process to the so-called Contact Group composed of the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Russia.

Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu said that there would be no administration vacuum in Kosovo until the elections and that they would not delay the status process.

The Kosovo parliament's term expires in November, while local elections should have been held last year. However, the then UNMIK chief, Soren Jessen-Petersen, decided to postpone the vote, saying that it would have an adverse effect on the process of defining the province's status.

The decision on the election dates will be made by Ruecker, as envisaged by Kosovo's constitutional framework.

(Xinhua News Agency July 27, 2007)