International Crisis Group on its last report on Kosovo from February stated:

[T]here is one area where the international community should consider a more intrusive mission: northern Kosovo, and Mitrovica in particular, where Serb parallel structures defy UNMIK and the provisional government (PISG) alike. Leaving a new Kosovo government to try to incorporate the north would invite a violent breakdown. A transitional international authority there is the only sensible answer.

ICG has stayed with the situation all along giving some very good advice to the parties. Now its office head in Belgrade, says:

Speaking in Washington, Lyon said the Serbian government has decided that it wants the separation of Serbian and ethnic Albanian areas of Kosovo. Evidence of the decision, he said, comes from the increasing number of propaganda pieces in state-controlled media and the rehabilitation of several Milosevic era ideologues. "All the preparations have been completed. And the Serbian government literally can flip a switch and partition Kosovo," he said.

ICG happens to be the group that first recommended broad autonomy for north of Mitrovica making it a center of Serbs in Kosovo. However, Albanians in the Presevo/Presheva Valley have responded to such programs by asking the equivalent for themselves.

In a report on the Presevo Valley, they recommend:

Current wellintentioned development policies are insufficient, and EU visa policies block the release of pent-up demographic pressures. In the medium to long term, the economic situation is likely to be resolved only through large-scale out-migration from the three main municipalities in southern Serbia, hopefully in the context of the overall development of Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia, as well as a liberalised travel and work regime with the EU.

The balance of policing responsibilities should be shifted to the multi-ethnic force from the paramilitary, nationalist Gendarmerie, which is still in charge of much local security and continues to engage in ethnic provocations.