TIMELINE-Key dates in Serbia's contested Kosovo province

(Reuters) - Serbs and Kosovo Albanians hold direct talks on Friday on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly in New York in a last-ditch diplomatic bid to agree the fate of the breakaway Serbian province.

Here is a chronology of key events since 1989, the 600th anniversary of the Ottoman Turkish defeat of the Serbs on the plains of Kosovo, which resonated through Serbian history.

June 1989 - Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic uses the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo to warn that Serbs will never yield control of the province. He starts stripping away its autonomy.

July 1990 - Ethnic Albanian legislators declare Kosovo independent. Belgrade dissolves Kosovo's autonomous assembly.

July 1992 - Writer Ibrahim Rugova becomes president of the self-proclaimed republic in clandestine elections. A Serbian crackdown ensues as Albanians build a parallel state following principles of non-violent civil disobedience, which fails.

March-Sept 1998 - A guerrilla insurgency of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army gathers pace. The KLA seizes swathes of land and war intensifies, involving the Yugoslav army and police in what NATO warns is an indiscriminate and brutal crackdown.

March 18-19, 1999 - Peace talks in France end in failure.

March 24 - NATO begins bombing Yugoslavia in air campaign that lasts 78 days before Belgrade yields.

June 10 - Milosevic agrees to withdraw troops from Kosovo and NATO ends bombing. About 45,000 NATO troops begin entering Kosovo a day later as Serb forces pull out. Thousands of Serb civilians flee a wave of revenge attacks.