is not really what's at stake here. The core point is whether a country can be partitioned with UNSC approval - and Russia is fighting the side of the UNSC.

We're creating all sorts of precedents in international law here if we push ahead. The demonization of Russia is hiding that right now, but we'll see if this lasts.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Frank, your "realpolitik" approach with a 10 ton bulldozer is a recipe for... war. You may think it's a game, but if you follow Russian politics and media, they're itching for a fight, and I can understand them. It's this imperial logic of "your back yard and our back yard" as you point out, that sets nations on collision courses and creates the basis for violent conflicts.
The Serbs got along with the Albanians in Kosovo for hundreds of years - there were ups and downs, sure, but in general, the two populations managed to find common ground. As they did with the Bosnian Muslims and the Croats - in general. What's been happening in the Balkans over the past 20 years is largely the result of foreign imperial efforts to extend one's back yard at the expense of the other's.
You point to a real problem when you say: "the only nations that have clout in the EU are..." which is precisely the reason why Serbia's politicians aren't interested in joining the EU; they don't want to be just another banana republic in Germany's sphere of influence.
The second major problem, as Jérôme correctly points out, is making decisions impacting international law outside the UNSC.
What baffles me and disappoints me is that our continental EU politicians just can't seem to wrench themselves from Washington's and London's destabilizing policies. From missile defense to Kosovo, the Anglo-objective is to drive a wedge between Russia and continental EU... A number of reasons are behind this: ensuring that NATO continues to have a purpose and stays in Europe, keeping an energy rich and geographically imposing Russia at bay, and I would even add - contributing to instability in Europe itself, given that the real danger is in a rock solid EURO which is becoming the world's reserve currency of choice.
So, what I would expect from out dear leaders in Paris, Berlin and Brussels is to (in this order):

1. Stick to international law and the UNSC
   
2. Get an independent foreign policy which is in the interest of Continental europe
   
3. Build constructive relations with Russia
   

There's been a lot of back-and-forth about varying levels of autonomy in lieu of independence, but of course they've led nowhere. Yet. One can hope negotiators will reach some sort of compromise before anything goes to hell.

I've heard (once) there's the risk that the small Serbian-dominated area in the north might secede and join Serbia should Kosovo go independent. Multiple stories I've seen talk about Serbs planning to just up and leave.

The International Herald Tribune has had quite a few human interest stories on Kosovo, B92 out of Belgrade naturally has a lot of information, and Balkan Investigative Reporting Network is an excellent source of news as well.

There really is no alternative to Kosovo independence. Russia realizes this. Serbia does too. Any play from here on in is for, perhaps, other border moves in the region. Bosnia, Vojvodina, Sandjak, North Mitrovica, Macedonia.

I should say the EU should be more concerned about the genie being let out of the bottle than anything Russia will do. The Serbs are a problem only inasmuch as the close quarters between Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo may lead to a flare-up of violence, as they did in 2004. In that case, you may very well see Serbia intervene only along the northern border.

I have very little faith that UNMIK or NATO or the EU battlegroups can effectively quell any violent outbreak. That has NEVER been their manner of operating in the past, and in fact, most often, international forces barrack and stay out of the fighting.

The whole Balkan scene from 1991 until today is a premium example of horrendously conducted diplomacy, and each time someone thinks they have the answer, yet another flare-up begins. EU diplomacy is all about sticking your finger in the dike.

Look at what recognition without regard for ethnic autonomy has yielded.

And why has EU policy not become anti American after the Faluja massacres? An entire city of 350 000 people was ground to rubble : 60% of the buildings were damaged, 20% completely destroyed.

Between 700 000 and 1 million Iraqi dead caused by the US led invasion. But who wants to talk about Fallujah? Rupert Murdoch? European Parliament? RELEX?

Yet Srebrenica gets the lime light in our "free Western" media. I'm a BBC regular, and I find the number of articles on Srebrenica revealing of British foreign policy in the Balkans. Every year, the chorus starts in June, reaching a pitch in July - the anniversary of the Srebrenica massacres. And every year, 14 years after the event, Bosnian Muslims are reburying and reburying and reburying their dead. Of course, any opportunity to demonize the Serbs is good.

Here is an excellent example of the anti-Serb spin in Western media:
The Sunday Times, Nov. 3, 1996, Jon Swain
In several months of digging at mass graves in the macabre hinterland around Srebrenica, the investigators recovered far fewer bodies than they had expected. Of the thousands of men and boys from the UN safe area who were executed by Bosnian Serbs in July 1995, only a few hundred - less than 10% of the 7,000 Muslims missing - have been dug up.
The empty graves speak volumes about the conspiracy by Bosnian Serbs to cover up the massacre at Srebrenica... The more plausible theory is that bodies have been made to "disappear". As long as a year ago, American spy satellites first revealed evidence of tampering at several grave sites which, when later exhumed, yielded fewer corpses than expected.

Fantastic really. We went from 14 000 dead in Srebrenica at the height of the war, to 8 000 dead, to 7 000 dead to 1 500 bodies - mostly of adult males - were they fighters? Western media knows that most were underage women, dressed up to look like men before being raped then massacred and then « made to disappear ».

Through 1992 and 1993, Srebrenica was a safe haven for Bosnian Muslim and their Arab Mujahideen allies. Serbs in surrounding villages were constant targets of attacks coming from Srebrenica. Then came the offensive in July. There's no war without blood.

My point is this: Srebrenica wasn't the defining moment in EU politics. Srebrenica was seized by the Anglo (and German in this case) business elites as an event to (over)publicize Serb "brutality" and sell a war to pacifist European populations that would otherwise have not supported one - as was Racak in Kosovo.