NATO nations pledge tough Kosovo force

BRUSSELS - NATO ministers pledged on Friday to keep their KFOR peace force in Kosovo at current strength as it heads towards independence and to make more troops available as necessary to deal with any violence.

Ethnic Albanian leaders of the breakaway Serbian province are expected to declare independence in the next couple of months after the failure of international mediation, potentially sparking new unrest in the Balkans.

"KFOR shall remain in Kosovo on the basis of U.N. Security Council resolution 1244, unless the Security Council decides otherwise," ministers agreed in a final communique.

"We renew our commitment to maintain KFOR's national force, contributions, including reserves, at current levels and with no new caveats," they added, using the military term for limits that nations sometimes impose on what their troops can do.

Such caveats meant NATO was caught badly off-guard during rioting in north Kosovo in 2004 which it struggled to control. The alliance has up to four reserve battalions -- each with several hundred troops -- on standby for trouble.

International mediators will report to the United Nations on Monday that efforts to reach a compromise between Pristina and Belgrade failed. Russia wants further mediation, but the West says the time to settle Kosovo's status has come.

A diplomatic source told Reuters the report will prescribe no way forward on the fate of the breakaway province.

"It is very factual, describes what was done, and what the outcome was...Clearly Washington, Russia and the European Union cannot agree on a joint way forward."

WHITE-KNUCKLE DAYS

Washington and the vast majority of European Union states are likely to recognise a declaration of independence by Kosovo, and are confident that its leaders will wait until around late January to enable NATO and the European Union to prepare for it.

"It is increasingly likely that the Kosovars will act in consultation and in coordination with us." a senior State Department official told reporters.

"We will have a lot of white-knuckle days ahead of us, I am more confident than I was six months ago that we will all be together in the end," the official said.

The agreement that the existing U.N. Security Council resolution can justify NATO's presence in Kosovo even after independence is crucial, as several nations such as Germany had harboured doubts over whether it could continue to apply.

U.N. Security Council veto-holder Russia has not made clear if it will challenge the validity of Resolution 1244, originally intended for Kosovo in its current state as a Serb province.

Diplomats believe an explicit pledge by alliance nations that they will keep KFOR at full strength and not impose limits -- such as banning their troops from riot control -- will be a serious deterrent in the tense weeks ahead.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told reporters it was crucial that European nations, whose internal divisions failed to stop the outbreak of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, showed unity in the months ahead.

"This is in Europe's backyard and European nations need to show real leadership ... We know from the mid-1990s the cost of Europe wringing its hands and failing to provide leadership."

NATO commanders are confident KFOR is well resourced to deal with trouble and diplomats play down the prospects of violence.

But the West has been irked by aggressive rhetoric from Belgrade, and on Thursday the EU's mediator on Kosovo demanded that Serbia disown a comment made by an adviser to Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica that "war is a legal tool".

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign to halt ethnic cleansing by Serb forces of the 90 percent ethnic Albanian province, which Belgrade insists must remain under its sovereignty.