Serbia says U.N. making mistake over Kosovo policing

Serbia's foreign minister said on Sunday it was a mistake for the U.N. mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to hand over policing in the province to the European Union without the consent of Serbia and the U.N. Security Council.

"The process of UNMIK reconfiguration has begun...without consent of all interested parties and without explicit approval by the U.N. Security Council," Vuk Jeremic was quoted by Beta news agency as saying. "We think that this is a big mistake."

UNMIK and the European Union mission EULEX are due to sign a memorandum of understanding on Monday on a plan which has been opposed by Serbia and Russia and split the Security Council.

A 2,200-member EU police mission is waiting to deploy in Kosovo.

Kosovo, long a province of Serbia, was placed under U.N. administration in 1999 after NATO bombing drove out Serb forces accused of mass killings of civilians in a two-year war against separatist guerrillas.

The ethnic Albanian majority of Kosovo declared independence in February. Many Western countries recognized it, but Serbia and its big-power ally Russia declared the move illegal.

Jeremic was speaking after returning from New York where he asked the U.N. General Assembly to include in its annual, mid-September session Serbia's request for an opinion from the International Court of Justice on whether Kosovo's declaration of independence was legal.

He said he expected that talks with UNMIK, to continue in the coming weeks, would result in an agreement which would be "explicitly confirmed by the U.N. Security Council, thereby winning full international legality."

"ENERGETIC" RUSSIAN SUPPORT

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in June he planned to "reconfigure" UNMIK.

In his July report to the Security Council he said that because the council was "unable to give guidance" he had asked the mission to cooperate with the EU "in order for it to assume an enhanced operational role in Kosovo in the area of the rule of law under the overall authority of the United Nations."

Russia, like Serbia, strongly opposes an EU takeover and Russian ambassador to Belgrade Alexander Konuzin told Politika daily in an interview published on Sunday that Serbia could count on "energetic" Russian support.

Russia was aware that the reconfiguration had started and planned to file a protest to the U.N. Secretariat, he said.

Agreement with the EU on Kosovo, along with capturing and handing over the two remaining war crimes indictees sought by the Hague tribunal would aid Serbia's accession to the EU, former foreign minister Goran Svilanovic said.

"If we were to eliminate those two obstacles by the end of this year or the middle of the next year, Serbia would for the first time since 2000 be in a situation to have a clear and open path to Europe," Svilanovic told Blic daily.

The government led by President Boris Tadic took office in July and declared EU membership a priority. But Tadic has told the Security Council that Belgrade cannot endorse Ban's plan.