Kosovo awaits recognition and Serb challenge

PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - Kosovo looked forward onMonday to recognition by the Western powers who went to war tosave its Albanian majority, but Russia served notice the newstate will never be forced on its Serb allies in the territory.

Fireworks brought to a close a day of celebration in theKosovo capital Pristina, where parliament adopted a declarationof independence from Serbia and proclaimed the new Republic ofKosovo a sovereign state.

Kosovo's 2 million Albanians were left guessing whichcountry would be first to recognise the sixth state to becarved from Serb-dominated former Yugoslavia, closing a longchapter in its bloody demise.

European Union foreign ministers meet on Monday to discussKosovo's secession. Swift recognition is expected from Britain,Germany, France and Italy as well as the United States.

At an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council,Western powers resisted a Russian bid to block Kosovo'sindependence, and said NATO and the EU would takeresponsibility for the region's stability.

Proposing the independence declaration to parliament, PrimeMinister Hashim Thaci said Kosovo would be a country of "allits citizens", a gesture to the 120,000 Serbs still livinghere.

But Serbia and Russia swept that aside.

"We'll strongly warn against any attempts at repressivemeasures should Serbs in Kosovo decide not to comply with thisunilateral proclamation of independence," Russia's U.N.ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said in New York.

Serbs in Kosovo, led by the Serb-dominated north and withthe full backing of Belgrade, reject the territory's secession,reinforcing an ethnic partition that NATO and the UnitedNations have failed to erase since the 1998-99 war.

Protests were called for midday on Monday (11 a.m. Britishtime) in Serb towns in Kosovo. A U.N. car was torched overnightin the northern Serb town of Zubin Potok, witnesses said,following hand grenades lobbed at EU and U.N. buildings in theSerb stronghold of Mitrovica within hours of the declaration.

ALL AVENUES EXHAUSTED

Most of the EU's 27 members will recognise Kosovo and willunderwrite it with a 2,000-strong rule-of-law mission to takeover supervision of the new state from the United Nations. Butat least six EU members are reluctant.

"Today's events ... represent the conclusion of a statusprocess that has exhausted all avenues in pursuit of anegotiated outcome," seven Western states on the U.N. SecurityCouncil said in a statement.

They said the status quo had "become unsustainable."

Almost two years of Serb-Albanian negotiations ended inDecember with neither side giving ground on the key issue ofsovereignty.

Russia has warned that Kosovo's secession would haverepercussions in breakaway regions across the world. China,which has claimed self-ruled Taiwan as its own since theirsplit in 1949, said it was "deeply concerned" by thedevelopment.

But Kosovo Albanians say there is no going back after Serbforces killed thousands and drove out almost one million in atwo-year war against separatist guerrillas. NATO bombed for 11weeks in 1999 to force a withdrawal of Serb forces, and theUnited Nations took control.

The Serb-dominated north has resisted attempts by the U.N.mission to extend its writ north of the River Ibar.

The new EU mission will face the same challenge. Someanalysts have long predicted that de facto, although not legal,partition has been Belgrade's "Plan B" all along.

"In the next period Serbia will function as a state inKosovo in the areas where Serbs live as the majority," SerbMinister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic said in Mitrovica,speaking in English. "It is so because Serbs recognise only onestate, and that is Serbia." (Additional reporting by BranislavKrstic and Patrick Worsnip; Editing by Ibon Villelabeitia)