European Union mission to Kosovo OK'd

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 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, Serbia's minister for Kosovo.

Hundreds of Serb nationalists demonstrated in Belgrade on Saturday outside the embassy of Slovenia, the country 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 a region it considers its historic heartland.

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

But Russia and some EU nations, including Spain, Romania and Greece, back Serbia in opposing the move to independence 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.

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

It added that the mission 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 include more than 2,000 people — in addition to the 1,000 other non-EU experts expected from the U.S. and other countries. The mission would replace the U.N. mission that has governed Kosovo since 1999.

EU foreign-policy chief Javier Solana said veteran Dutch diplomat Pieter Feith would be appointed the EU's 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 after Kosovo's declaration.

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

Information in this article, originally published Feb. 17, 2008, was corrected Feb. 23, 2008. In a previous version of this story, a headline referred to Kosovo as a Baltic state. It is in the Balkans.