(VOULIAGMENI) - Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic on Wednesday said Kosovo faced a "free fall to failure" if it stuck to its course of self-declared independence from Belgrade.

"Kosovo will not be a member of the United Nations...and as such it will not belong in the world community of sovereign nations," Jeremic said.

"It will remain unattractive to foreign investment, unresponsive to the rule of law, and incapable of preventing its free fall to failure without the engagement of Belgrade," he told a conference on European foreign policy and security in Athens.

Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence on February 17 has so far been recognised by 38 countries, including the United States and most European Union states.

But Serbia and its traditional ally Russia have strongly rejected Kosovan independence, declaring it to be a violation of international law.

Serbia considers mainly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo to be one of its cultural heartlands.

Jeremic on Wednesday said Serbia would call for a majority vote in the United Nations general assembly to seek the legal opinion of the International Court of Justice on the issue.

"I think the vast majority of countries that are member-states of the UN would demonstrate their discomfort at the flagrant violation of the UN charter," he said.

Albanian Foreign Minister Lulzim Basha, who traded barbs with Jeremic during much of the two-hour session, insisted that Serbia's efforts would be futile.

"In every forum, Vuk, you have tried to (prevent Kosovo's independence) but you failed," Basha told his Serbian counterpart.

"Your government cannot be held responsible...it was radical 19th century nationalism that lost Kosovo," he said, arguing that Kosovars were subjected to a discrimination "which frequently assumed the proportions of state genocide."

Over a million Albanian Kosovars were forced to leave their homes, nearly 10,000 were murdered and over 3,000 are still missing because of a crackdown by then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic that peaked in 1999, Basha said.

"I will never try to minimise the dreadful deeds of the Milosevic regime...(but) Serbia is no longer a dictatorship," Jeremic fired back.

"We're on a very slippery slope if we start comparing tragedies."

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