Police fire tear gas at Kosovo Albanian protesters

PRISTINA, Serbia, Feb 10 (Reuters) - United Nations police in Kosovo fired tear gas during clashes with ethnic Albanians protesting in the capital Pristina today against a UN plan on the fate of the breakaway Serbian province.

A Reuters reporter saw at least one person wounded as protesters waving sticks tried to break through a police barricade and were met with tear gas. UN armoured personnel carriers advanced through the crowd, which began to disperse.

A UN plan unveiled this month by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari would, if adopted by the UN Security Council, set the territory on the path to independence, eight years since NATO bombs drove out Serb forces and the UN took control.

But some among Kosovo's 90-percent ethnic Albanian majority are angry at the plan's provisions for a powerful European overseer and broad self-government for the remaining 100,000 Serbs. Saturday's protesters demanded the right to a referendum on independence and rejected negotiations with Serbia.

''Freedom doesn't come in packages,'' the protesters chanted, in reference to Ahtisaari's 58-page proposal, the result of one year of shuttle diplomacy and fruitless Serb-Albanian talks.

IMPATIENT Serbia opposes independence for what it regards as its medieval heartland. But the United States and European Union back Ahtisaari's blueprint and hope to adopt it at the UN Security Council within months.

Russia, however, repeated today it would not back any solution that was not also acceptable to Belgrade.

''If we see that one of the parties is not happy with the proposed solution, we should not support that decision,'' Russian President Vladimir Putin said in Munich.

Ahtisaari has invited Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians to a final round of talks in Vienna from February 21 until early March.

Albanians are growing increasingly impatient for the UN Security Council to endorse the plan, but the West has now twice delayed the process to avoid radicalising Serbia.

Ten thousand Albanians died and almost one million were expelled in Serbia's 1998-99 counter-insurgency war.

Earlier today, Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Agim Ceku paid a rare visit to the mainly Serb north of the province for a security briefing by commanders of the 16,500-strong NATO peace force in Kosovo.

The mainly Serb slice of Kosovo north of the River Ibar has been off-limits to Kosovo Albanian leaders since the war and Western powers fear a breakaway bid if Kosovo wins independence.

REUTERS BDP VC2132