EU nations approve policing mission for Kosovo

BRUSSELS, Belgium: A day before Kosovo is expected to declare independence, European Union nations agreed Saturday to send a 1,800-strong mission to Kosovo to help the fledgling state build its police force and judiciary.

The mission will include 700 police officers, as well as judges, prosecutors and other legal experts, to help the ethnic Albanian leadership with security, legal and customs issues after Kosovo breaks away from Serbia.

In Belgrade, Serbia's government sharply condemned the decision by the 27-nation bloc, denouncing it as "shameful." The mission "effectively recognizes the independence of Kosovo, which remains an inalienable part of Serbia," said Slobodan Samardzic, the Cabinet minister for Kosovo.

Hundreds of Serb nationalists demonstrated Saturday outside the embassy of Slovenia, the country currently holding the rotating EU presidency.

Ethnic Albanian leaders in Kosovo — a Serbian province that is more than 90 percent ethnic Albanian — are expected to declare independence unilaterally over the objections of Serbia, which has pushed to retain the region considered its historic heartland.

The U.S. and most EU nations, including Britain, France and Germany, are expected to recognize Kosovo's sovereignty.

However, Russia and some EU nations, including Spain, Romania and Greece, back Serbia in opposing Kosovo's move to independence, which has been closely orchestrated with EU and U.S. officials.

EU foreign ministers are to meet Monday in Brussels to try to forge a common stance on Kosovo but diplomats acknowledge it will be hard to get those opposed to Kosovo's independence to agree to a declaration now being drafted offering both Kosovo and Serbia closer EU ties and eventual EU membership.

Over the next four months, the mission, EU-LEX, will "assist the Kosovo institutions, judicial authorities and law enforcement agencies in their progress toward sustainability and accountability," the bloc said in legal text published Saturday.

It added that the EU's administrative tasks would help in "further developing and strengthening an independent multiethnic justice system and multiethnic police and customs service ... free from political interference."

Officials say the EU force could expand to more than 2,000 people — in addition to the 1,000 other non-EU experts expected from the United States and other countries.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said veteran Dutch diplomat Pieter Feith would be appointed the EU special representative in Kosovo and retired French Lt. Gen. Yves de Kermabon head of mission.

Outside Pristina, Kosovo's capital, NATO commanders said peacekeepers will not tolerate any unrest following Kosovo's declaration.

"We will react very strongly to any kind of provocation," NATO's French commander, Lt. Gen. Xavier Bout de Marnhac, told reporters Saturday.

NATO, which has 16,000 troops in Kosovo, has employed unmanned aircraft and increased foot patrols and checkpoints across the province.

___

Associated Press writers Slobodan Lekic in Belgrade, Serbia, and Nebi Qena in Pristina, Serbia, contributed to this report.

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