EU and US envoys urge Kosovo and Serbia to talk to ease tensions

Pristina hosted EU envoy Miroslav Lajcak and U.S. Special Representative to the Western Balkans Gabriel Escobar's meeting with Prime Minister Albin Kurti. They met President Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade later.

Due to Western concerns about the volatile Balkan region, top diplomats from Germany, France, and Italy accompanied the visitors.

Kosovo and Serbia have fought for decades. Over 10,000 Kosovo Albanians died in their 1998-99 war. Belgrade has rejected Kosovo's 2008 unilateral independence declaration.

Kosovo and Serbia want to join the EU, but the EU requires them to resolve their differences.

To end months of political turmoil, Western powers want Kosovo and Serbia to implement an EU 10-point plan from February. Kurti and Vucic approved, but with reservations.

The EU and U.S. want Kosovo to create an Association of the Serb-Majority Municipalities to coordinate education, health care, land planning, and economic development in ethnic Serb-majority northern Kosovo.

Pristina fears such an association would lead to a Serb mini-state with wide autonomy like Bosnia's Republika Srpska.

Serbia denies involvement, saying Kosovo ethnic Serbs organized the attack. Vucic ally Milan Radoicic, the ringleader, was briefly detained in Serbia before being released.

The last Kosovo-Serbia normalization talks ended in mid-September before the northern Kosovo flare-up. It's unclear when meetings will resume.

NATO has added 200 U.K. and more than 100 Romanian troops to a 4,500-strong peacekeeping force in Kosovo. It also sent heavier weapons to boost peacekeeper combat power.