BRUSSELS, Dec 9 (Reuters) - EU leaders are expected to agree this week that efforts to reach a negotiated solution to the Kosovo problem are exhausted, and offer to take responsibility for security and justice in the breakaway Serbian province. A deadline for a negotiated deal on the fate of Kosovo expires on Monday. Mediators have submitted a report to the United Nations saying they were unable to find compromise between Serbia's offer of autonomy and the Albanian majority's demand for independence. Here are some possible scenarios for what could happen next. SERBIA, RUSSIA ASK FOR MORE TALKS Serbia and its ally Russia insist more negotiations are needed, and any final outcome should go through the United Nations Security Council. The United States and most European Union members are convinced there is no room for compromise between Serbia's offer of autonomy and the Kosovo Albanians' demand for independence. EU leaders are expected to agree at a summit this week to take over policing and justice in the province as foreseen by a U.N-sponsored plan that Russia blocked earlier this year. Serbia might press its point with counter-measures, including trade blockades or border closures. KOSOVO SETS DATE FOR INDEPENDENCE DECLARATION Kosovo Albanian politicians have said they will set a date for a unilateral declaration of independence after consulting Washington and Brussels. The timing will probably depend on the coordination of U.N. and EU diplomats on the handover from one mission to the other, as well as on the date of presidential elections in Serbia which local media say could fall between mid-January and late February. Analysts say the West will wait until after the election is over to avert a protest vote that would put a hardline nationalist in power -- but it could also offer Serbia a sweetener in the form of a pre-membership pact, and hope to pre-empt a backlash that way. MINORITY SERBS FLEE A recent survey among Kosovo's minority Serbs showed that some 70 percent believe violence will escalate in the province once the Albanian majority declares independence. Some 46 percent said they would then leave an independent Kosovo "at any cost", while a further 23 percent said they would leave once they secured "a minimum" of living conditions elsewhere. SERBIA SEEKS PARTITION OF KOSOVO Although the Serb government states publicly that it does not want a partition of Kosovo, it has for years been setting up parallel institutions in the northern, mostly Serb part that borders Serbia proper. It has been picking up the bills for healthcare, education and public administration, and encouraging minority Serbs to look to Belgrade as their capital in all respects, to the extent that a de-facto partition is almost unavoidable. Serbia has also raised the possibility that Serbs in Bosnia could, in their turn, secede. PROSPECTS OF VIOLENCE The restive Albanian minorities in neighbouring Macedonia and in Serbia's southern Presevo Valley are looking closely at Kosovo, with some hardline local leaders already speaking of land swaps especially if Kosovo is partitioned. Although many guerrillas from the Kosovo Liberation Army gave up their weapons after the end of the 1998-99 war, tens of thousands of weapons are believed to be still hidden in the province, many in the hands of criminal gangs. Small nationalist groups -- both Serb and Albanian -- have pledged to take up arms to defend their respective causes, but the 16,000 NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo act as guarantee against major violence. (Writing by Ellie Tzortzi; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)
