United Nations, Oct 4, SPA -- Any delay in determining the future status of Kosovo could threaten the gains made by the United Nations in the Serbian province it has administered since Western forces drove out Yugoslav forces amid inter-ethnic fighting in 1999, U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon said in a report Wednesday.The U.N. peacekeeping mission in the province has mostly achieved what it can, and “further progress depends on a timely resolution of the future status of Kosovo,” Ban wrote in his latest report on the Kosovo mission.The secretary-general warned that a “further prolongation of the future-status process puts at risk the achievements of the United Nations in Kosovo since June of 1999,” and he pledged the United Nations’ support for talks between the two sides led by the European Union, the United States, and Russia.“No effort should be spared to reach an acceptable solution to the question of the status of Kosovo in accordance with the guiding principles” of the Contact Group comprised of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia, Ban said.“Momentum in the process to resolve the status of Kosovo must be maintained until closure is reached,” the secretary-general said. “Otherwise, there is a real risk of progress beginning to unravel and of instability in Kosovo and the region.”--SPA www.spa.gov.sa/488029