US counts on Russian support for Kosovo plan

WASHINGTON, Mar 12 (Reuters) The United States hopes Russia will back a UN plan putting Serbia's Kosovo province on the road to independence and does not expect a Russian veto in the Security Council, a US official said today.

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Dan Fried, who was in Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia last week, said Russia had so far been supportive of the UN plan that sets out a framework for an independent state for Kosovo.

''I hope that our cooperation will continue and I expect that it shall. Obviously, Russia has expressed its concerns and they can speak for themselves, but the fact is that we have had a good record of cooperation,'' Fried told reporters.

''I would not assume there will be a Russian veto.'' Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999 when NATO bombed Serbia to drive out Serb forces accused of atrocities in a two-year counter-insurgency campaign in the province. About 10,000 Albanians died and almost 1 million fled before NATO troops occupied Kosovo.

Russia has warned it will not support a settlement that does not have the assent of Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians. As Serbia's fellow Orthodox Christian ally, Russia insists time be given for both sides to agree on a solution.

But over the weekend, UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari declared an end to more than a year of deadlocked Serb-Albanian talks over Kosovo and said it was now up to the UN Security Council to decide whether to give the province independence.

Serbia, with deep historic ties to Kosovo, asked for the talks to continue and called Ahtisaari's plan a ''brutal violation'' of the UN charter.

NOT A PRECEDENT Ahtisaari said his deputy would take the proposal to UN headquarters in New York this week and it would probably come before the council in early April.

Anyone arguing for more discussion was ''simply trying to delay the process,'' Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

While it avoids the word independence for Kosovo, his plan sets out the framework for an independent state under a foreign overseer, European police mission and NATO peace force. It offers self-government and protection for the 100,000 remaining Serbs.

The plan has been greeted coolly and at times violently by some of Kosovo's 2 million ethnic Albanians. But their leaders have accepted it.

Belgrade has offered broad autonomy, but no Kosovo army or foreign ministry, and the return of some Serbian police.

Fried said he did not expect Serbs to leave Kosovo once a plan was in place.

But he made clear the United States did not see a UN plan for Kosovo serving as a precedent for extremist groups in other parts of the world to demand independence, such as in Abkhazia or south Ossetia.

Fried said there were extremists on both sides in Kosovo, which was awash with weapons.

''This is the Balkans, people have guns,'' he said.

The international community must act quickly to prevent a build-up of tensions in Kosovo, he said.

''Delay is not going to bring more stability,'' Fried said.

''Delay could bring exactly the kind of instability we are worried about.'' The key question, he said, was whether ''responsible forces'' on all sides could work together and whether Ahtisaari's plan provided sufficient protections for the Serb community with an attractive enough future for Kosovo.

Reuters AD VP0335