Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku yesterday warned Kosovo Serbs not to try to break away from the rest of the province out of anger at a draft UN plan that would set it on a path to independence from Serbia.

Ceku said no one was fully satisfied with the plan, which falls short of Kosovo Albanian demands for full sovereignty, but any bid by Serbs in the north to split the territory in two would not work.

"They have to understand that this is not 1991. They cannot do what the Croatian Serbs did," he told Reuters in an interview. Backed by Belgrade, Serbs carved out a breakaway region in Croatia during its 1991-95 war for independence from Yugoslavia. The self-proclaimed Republic of Krajina was swept away in a Croatian military offensive in the last days of the war.

Ceku, an ethnic Albanian, fought in the Croatian army, before joining a 1998-99 Kosovo Albanian insurgency. A Serbian crackdown drew NATO into an 11-week bombing campaign to drive out Serb forces and the United Nations took control.

Serbs who dominate a slice of northern Kosovo have threatened to secede from the province if it wins independence from Serbia. The divide is so entrenched that Ceku cannot safely visit the area.