By Michael Roddy

PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - Serb officials

ended a brief session of Kosovo peace

talks Wednesday criticizing key ethnic

Albanians for staying away and strongly

hinting that Serbia will reject the latest

U.S.-drafted peace plan.

Serbian President Milan Milutinovic said

leaders of the ethnic Albanian community

seeking independence had done

themselves a disservice by boycotting the

meeting, convened unilaterally by the Serbs

and held in a government building.

``Those who do not respond to the

invitation, it is to their own detriment,''

Milutinovic said after the two-hour session.

``But we will be here if they want to talk,'' he

told reporters, adding: ``We are patient and

we expect them to show up eventually.''

But Milutinovic took a hard line on granting

concessions to the ethnic Albanians, who

are a nine-to-one majority in the southern

Serbian province and whose main leaders

want complete independence from Serbia.

They had dismissed the talks as a

propaganda ploy by Serbia.

``This is not a question of concessions,''

Milutinovic said. ''These are negotiations

and when you negotiate both sides have to

compromise and the solution can be found

only through talks and compromises made

by both sides.''

He said in his opening speech Serbia

envisioned ``a democratic self-government

within the republic of Serbia and thereby

within the republic of Yugoslavia.''

He rejected any plan that did not respect the

existing borders of Kosovo and keep it

within Serbia.

Milutinovic made a strong suggestion that

Serbia will officially reject the latest version

of a draft peace plan that U.S. Ambassador

to Macedonia Chris Hill presented to both

sides at the beginning of the month.

The Serbian president, following his

meeting with leaders of some of the smaller

Kosovo ethnic communities, said the

participants made very critical remarks

about Hill's draft.

``Those remarks are absolutely legitimate

and I support them,'' he said.

He said the latest Hill draft, excerpts of

which have been published in local

newspapers, ``is not entirely in line with the

Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement, does not

respect full equality of all national

communities in Kosovo and in many ways

contradicts the legal system of Serbia and

Yugoslavia.''

An agreement in October between Yugoslav

President Slobodan Milosevic and U.S.

Balkan troubleshooter Richard Holbrooke

brought an end to a Serb offensive against

Kosovo Albanians, after the West

threatened NATO air strikes.

At least 1,000 people have been killed and

250,000 made homeless in fighting in

Kosovo this year.

Attending the meeting with Milutinovic were

representatives of Kosovo's Egyptian,

Romany, Turkish and Muslim communities,

Russian embassy officials and loyalist

ethnic Albanians from the Djakovica region.

But key ethnic Albanian leaders, including

the community's elected president Ibrahim

Rugova and members of the separatist

Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), stayed

away.

Also missing were Hill and Austrian

Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch, whose

nation holds the revolving European Union

presidency.

Diplomatic sources said Hill and Petritsch

were in Vienna.

The meeting was held the same day that

more information filtered out about the

contents of the latest version of the draft

peace plan being developed by Hill.

The new draft sees Kosovo linked more

closely to federal Yugoslavia with reduced

ties to Serbia, according to excerpts

published in a newspaper and from a copy

seen by Reuters.

Dated November 1 and distributed to the

warring sides by Hill, it was seen as a step

forward by ethnic Albanians, who are

fighting for independence for the southern

Serbian province but have reluctantly

accepted Hill's mediation.

Excerpts published in Albanian by the

leading ethnic Albanian newspaper Koha

Ditore, propose that the province have

deputies only to the federal assembly and

not the Serbian assembly as was the case

in the previous draft dated October 1.

``Kosovo shall be offered at least (30)

deputies in the House of Citizens of the

Federal assembly,'' an excerpt of a draft

copy seen by Reuters said.

The previous version said Kosovo would

have 10 deputies in the federal house and

20 in the Serbian national assembly.

Reut11:11 11-18-98