The four major European powers involved in Balkan diplomacy said negotiations on Kosovo's future have been exhausted and it is time to move forward on the breakway Serbian province's status, an EU source said.

In a letter to their European Union counterparts, the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany and Italy stopped short of calling for independence but said the EU must be prepared to take responsibility on the ground, the source said.

The letter came ahead of meetings next week of the 27-nation bloc's foreign ministers and leaders after European, US and Russian mediators failed to break the impasse between Belgrade and Pristina on the Kosovo Albanians' denand for independence.