By Matt Robinson

BELGRADE, Nov 23 (Reuters) - A two-day meeting of Serbs and Albanians in the Austrian spa town of Baden next week is unlikely to make much of an entry in the annals of Balkan peace conferences, although its aftermath could be historic.

Barring an unimaginable about-face by Serbia or the Kosovo Albanians, negotiations on the fate of the breakaway province will limp to a close by next Tuesday night, two weeks before a deadline for an agreement on its future.

There will be no repeat of the lockdown in Dayton, Ohio, when Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims negotiated under big power pressure until they agreed to end the 1992-95 war.

Nor is Baden likely to echo the extraordinary but abortive peace conference at Chateau Rambouillet in France that preceded NATO's 1999 air war to wrest control of Kosovo from Serbia.

The Albanians say the post-Baden scenario is already written - a declaration of independence and promised recognition by the West. Just brace for the fallout in Serbia and the diplomatic chill from Russia.

"We are going to have to be creative enough to find ways to exhaust those three days," said Skender Hyseni, the deadpan spokesman for Kosovo negotiators, after their last inconclusive meeting in Brussels on Tuesday.

Serbia has offered Hong Kong, or Finland's Swedish-speaking Aland Island as examples of the broad autonomy it is prepared to give its southern province, where 2 million Albanians have been living under U.N. administration for the past eight years.

The Albanians say autonomy is no compromise; it is less than they already have and far from the independence they fought for.

The trio of U.S., Russian and European mediators plans a final trip to Belgrade and Pristina before submitting its report to the United Nations, due by Dec. 10.

The West sees no prospect of restoring Serb rule, and there is growing consensus in the 27-member EU that Kosovo's independence should be recognised even without U.N. blessing.

EU CONSENSUS

Serbia turned the full force of its army on separatist Kosovo guerrillas in a 1998-99 conflict in which thousands of civilians were killed and 800,000 Albanians driven out before NATO intervention stopped the ethnic cleansing.

Serbia, which insists its territorial rights are inviolable, says the Albanians can do what they like within Kosovo's borders but cannot usurp and gain title to the land Serbs consider the ancient heartland of their nation.

Diplomats close to the talks say potential solutions already discussed will be thrashed out again in Baden, as will Kosovo's offer of a friendship treaty between two independent states.

But the answer on both sides will be the same: "No."

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica on Tuesday dismissed a plan for "contractual ties" between Serbia and Kosovo as "a trick" to seal independence by the back door.

Russia and Serbia reject the December deadline.

European Union envoy Wolfgang Ischinger took on the mediating task in August, after the threat of a Russian veto blocked adoption of a U.N. plan for independence under European Union supervision.

That came after 13 months of sterile talks mediated by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who concluded that an agreed solution was virtually impossible.

Ex-rebel fighter Hashim Thaci hopes to form a coalition government in Kosovo in December, after a Nov 17 election, and has promised to waste no time in declaring independence.

But Baden is the mediators' one last shot.

"No one will be able to say after the fact that we didn't explore all the possibilities," Ischinger said this week, at the same time as conceding a deal was "probably not going to be achieved". (Editing by Douglas Hamilton and Philippa Fletcher)

AlertNet news is provided by