Serbia and Kosovo failed Wednesday to find common ground on how to defuse longstanding tensions at EU-sponsored talks, officials said.

"The gap between the two sides is very narrow but deep," said EU foreign affairs head Catherine Ashton, who chaired the eighth round of talks in Brussels aimed at normalizing ties between Serbia and breakaway territory Kosovo.

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic on Monday cast doubt on whether a final agreement with breakaway Kosovo is attainable, a day ahead of highly anticipated EU-sponsored talks with the Pristina leadership in Brussels.

"Intractable statements from Pristina put us before a fait accompli and are not encouraging," Nikolic told reporters ahead of Tuesday's meeting.

Kosovo's culture minister on Friday said Germany had returned seven millennia-old artefacts that were smuggled out during the 1998-1999 war with Serbia and were unexpectedly found in a German police raid.

The seven terracotta items, including a small bowl, date back to the neolithic era, between 3,500 to 4,000 BC. They were found by German police in an unrelated investigation against two Serbs several years ago, Memli Krasniqi said, adding that it took a while to confirm the items came from Kosovo.

The EU said Wednesday that significant progress has been made in talks with Serbia and Kosovo aimed at defusing tensions in one of Europe's last trouble-spots, having demanded concrete results from the two parties.

EU foreign affairs head Catherine Ashton said a fifth series of talks she chaired with Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci had gone well, with all sides pleased at the outcome and another meeting set for March 4.

The bells of Pristina's sole Orthodox Church toll for a liturgy that will bring brief spiritual peace to a small group of Serbs, remaining members of a dwindling community in Kosovo, five years after it broke away from Serbia.

At the Saint Nicolas church, three elderly Serbs listen to the mass held in a little corridor along the nave, too big and too cold for so few people.

Serbia named its key negotiator for Kosovo as its first diplomatic representative to Pristina since the breakaway territory unilaterally declared independence in 2008, an official said Monday.

The move, seen as a further step in improving relations between Belgrade and Pristina under EU-mediated dialogue, came just a few days after Kosovo named a career diplomat, Lulzim Peci, as its representative to Serbia.

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic will meet his Kosovo counterpart Atifete Jahjaga in Brussels next week, in a first such meeting since breakaway Kosovo declared independence in 2008, officials said Friday.

"President Nikolic will meet Atifete Jahjaga in Brussels on Wednesday, February 6," said the message on Nikolic's official Twitter account.

Serbia Prime Minister Ivica Dacic vowed an investigation Thursday after he was pranked by a Playboy model without underwear who posed as an interviewer and uncrossed her legs in a "Basic Instinct" skit.

"This will not go unpunished and the whole case will be fully investigated," Dacic's security adviser Ivica Toncev told Serbian state television RTS.

Kosovo named a career diplomat for its first diplomatic representative to Serbia since Pristina unilaterally declared independence in 2008, as a further step in establishing relations with Belgrade under EU-mediated dialogue, an official said Tuesday.

The move came after Kosovo and Serbia agreed during Brussels-mediated talks to exchange liaison officers whose main goal would be to improve and step up communication between Belgrade and Pristina.

The townsfolk of Kikinda in northeast Serbia have welcomed an unlikely intruder into their midst, even decreeing stiff fines for anyone who dares disturb the peace of the long-eared owls that have made this their winter refuge.

Officials said Friday that a fine of up to 10,000 euros ($13,000) will be payable for disturbing the 700-odd birds that find shelter in the town's central treetops from November to May.