(Adds diplomat source on Contact Group meeting) By Shaban Buza PRISTINA, Serbia, July 25 (Reuters) - The U.N. governor in Kosovo called on major powers on Wednesday to set a clear roadmap to the final status of Serbia's breakaway province, whose independence bid is blocked by Russia. Joachim Ruecker told journalists on his return from Brussels that he had warned the European Union of the dangers of further delaying a decision the people of Kosovo had been led to expect by last October, after nearly eight years under U.N. rule. "I stressed that there is a lot of anxiety and tension and people need and deserve clarity on status and also on the status process," Ruecker said. "It will be very helpful if we would have something like roadmap or timetable on the way forward, something more than just an announcement of the time of engagement," Ruecker said. Envoys of the Contact Group -- the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Russia -- resolved at a meeting in Vienna late on Wednesday to set up a new round of Kosovo talks, but failed to agree on a deadline for the negotiations. A diplomatic source close to the talks said Russia and the United States agreed to a German proposal under which a "troika" of a single EU envoy, Russia and the United States would oversee a new round of shuttle diplomacy between Belgrade and Pristina. While those new talks should begin soon, possibly in August, Russia did not accept a western deadline of 120 days for the talks, but insisted at the Vienna meeting they be open-ended. Serbia and Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders talked for 13 months under U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari with no compromise, and there is still no glimmer of a way out of that deadlock. The United States, which backs Ahtisaari's plan for handing the ethnic Albanian majority a form of independence while seeking to protect its Serb minorities, warned on Wednesday that violence could return to the region if diplomacy failed. LAST CHAPTER Serbia opposes the Kosovo Albanian demand for independence and believes that with Moscow's help it has now successfully buried the Western-backed blueprint for supervised independence laid out earlier this year by Ahtisaari. Last week, the U.S. and European Union had to discard a draft U.N. resolution based on the plan, because Russia seemed sure to veto it. Belgrade considered it a victory. U.S. envoy Frank Wisner told Kosovo's Express daily the new round of negotiations led by the Contact Group "will be an important last chapter, where all sides can put their thoughts on the table." A NATO-led force of 16,000 troops keeps the peace in Kosovo, where 100,000 Serbs are outnumbered 20-to-1 by ethnic Albanians. The province has been run by the United Nations since 1999 when NATO bombs forced out Serbian troops who killed and expelled thousands of Albanians in a 2-year war with guerrillas. The ethnic Albanian majority will accept nothing less than independence. Serbia, which sees Kosovo as the cradle of its Orthodox faith, steadfastly rejects secession. It is not clear whether it is now the Contact Group -- an ad hoc, non-executive grouping in which no country has a veto -- that will make a final decision on Kosovo, or whether the issue would be returned to the Security Council once talks end. The EU, which would take over supervision and policing of Kosovo from the United Nations, wants a U.N. mandate for the job otherwise some members may refuse to go along with independence. Former Finnish president Ahtisaari told Finnish television his team was "not part of the negotiation group" at this point but the issue would probably go back to the Security Council and "everyone involved hopes there will be a resolution after these talks." (Additional reporting by Boris Groendahl in Vienna, Helsinki bureau, and Stuart Grudgings in Washington)
