(Updates with Slovak PM) By Douglas Hamilton BELGRADE, April 26 (Reuters) - Serb officials said on Thursday at least one member of a U.N. Security Council fact-finding mission had been persuaded to change his mind about Kosovo's demand for independence. They quoted South Africa's U.N. ambassador Dumisani Kumalo as saying that, after hearing the arguments of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and President Boris Tadic, he no longer views the issue as a straight choice between independence or not. "Until now an opinion prevailed that there were just two solutions," Kumalo said, citing Serb insistence on sovereignty versus a plan by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari giving independence to Kosovo as demanded by its 90 percent Albanian majority. "Now, after what you told us and explained, we see things differently," he said, according to top prime ministerial and presidential aides Slobodan Samardzic and Vladeta Jankovic, quoted by the official agency Tanjug. Kumalo did not speak to reporters. A South African Foreign Ministry spokesman said policy was still under consideration. U.N. mission leader Johan Verbeke of Belgium, underlining that the Council did not routinely carry out such visits, was non-committal at a news conference in Belgrade. "This is a mission for gathering information ... We are not here in Belgrade or later in Pristina for decision-making. That is to be done later on in New York and I will not at this stage second-guess the final outcome ... before we have concluded." The 15-nation delegation flew late on Thursday by French military plane to Kosovo, where it will spend the next two days visiting Kosovo Albanian communities and Serb enclaves. The mission is part of a test of wills between the West on the one hand and Serbia and Russia on the other over Ahtisaari's plan. It was instigated by Russia, a permanent Security Council member with veto power, which advocates more time for talks. SEE FOR THEMSELVES Serbia and Kosovo Albanians are vying for the sympathy of the Council states, which may be asked to decide in the next month or two whether Serbia's insistence on territorial sovereignty overrules the wishes of its majority population. The West has concluded compromise is impossible. "We aren't going to improve the possibilities for a stable situation in the Balkans by delay," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Oslo. "We are going to have to act." Kosovo Albanians would have to accept "some obligations about the protection of minority rights, about the protection of religious sites, about really how to build a multi-ethnic state", she said, and "Serbia has nothing to fear ... it has everything to gain by closer association with Europe." Current Security Council member Slovakia, which has expressed reservations over the plan despite official EU endorsement, on Thursday backed the idea of further talks. "I don't think the possibilities of dialogue have been exhausted," Prime Minister Robert Fico told Reuters in Berlin. Western diplomats see no "third way" out of the impasse. But some analysts believe Kosovo might be partitioned, so that Serbs in its northern quadrant stay in Serbia. The United Nations has run Kosovo since June 1999, when NATO drove out Serb forces to halt the killing of ethnic Albanian civilians during an insurgency. About 10,000 Albanians were killed and a million temporarily driven out. Albanians in turn took revenge on Serbs and up to 200,000 fled, although the figure is disputed. Some 100,000 remain, half living in isolated enclaves under NATO protection.(Additional reporting by Branislav Krstic and Matt Robinson in Kosovo, Beti Bilandzic and Ljiljana Cvekic in Belgrade, Paul Simao in Johannesburg, David Brunnstrom in Oslo and Louis Charbonneau in Berlin)
