Luxembourg ? A plan backed by the United States for the independence of Serbia’s breakaway province of Kosovo would be a “delayed-action land mine” that would foment future conflicts in the Balkans, Russia’s foreign minister warned Monday.

Sergei Lavrov was referring to a controversial U.N. plan that would grant the impoverished region of 2 million people – 90 percent of them ethnic Albanians – virtual independence. The province has been under U.N. and NATO control since a brief aerial war in 1999 drove Serb forces out of the region.

“There should be no unilateral efforts to impose solutions because these Balkan nations need to live together in the future,” Lavrov said after a meeting with his European Union counterparts.

“We need a stable resolution,” he said. “We shouldn’t plant a delayed-action land mine under the Kosovo process,” the Russian foreign minister told reporters.

Washington strongly supports the plan, which must be approved by the U.N. Security Council.

But Serbia and Russia have rejected the proposal, saying it runs counter to the U.N. Charter because it would dismember a sovereign state. The European Union has tried to bridge the gap, although its own 27 member states are themselves divided on the issue.