Serbia says it won't trade Kosovo for EU or NATO

BELGRADE, June 12 (Reuters) Serbia will never surrender Kosovo to the breakaway province's ethnic Albanian majority or trade its territory for European Union or NATO membership, Serb leaders said today.

Serbia ''will give up neither Kosovo nor its European future'', President Boris Tadic said in a statement which rejected ''any compensation for lost territory''.

''It would be damaging if any country recognised the independence of Kosovo without a proper decision by the Security Council'', he added.

The statement was softer in tone but much the same in substance as a vow by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who yesterday said US President George W Bush had ''disgusted'' Serbs by promising independence to Kosovo and would not be forgiven.

Kostunica today said taking land from a sovereign state ''in return for the offer of a bright future'' was unacceptable.

The row deepened as Kosovo marked the 8th anniversary of the deployment of 60,000 troops of NATO, which bombed Serbia for 11 weeks in 1999 to compel it to withdraw forces who killed some 10,000 Albanian civilians in a counter-insurgency conflict.

The dispute over Kosovo's independence has turned into a diplomatic standoff between Russia and the West.

Western hopes that pro-Western Tadic would be more amenable than Kostunica to the West's wish to grant statehood to Kosovo's 90 per cent ethnic Albanian evaporated on May 15 after he and Kostunica sealed a coalition pact and closed ranks on the issue.

MOSCOW OR BRUSSELS? In a desperate diplomatic bid to head off the loss of 15 percent of its territory, Serbia now relies heavily on Russia, which has made plain it may veto a UN resolution that Serbia does not support.

That reliance on Moscow sits awkwardly with Serbia's bid for EU membership, the prime goal of Tadic's Democratic Party. While there is no formal linkage, dealing a blow to EU diplomacy on Kosovo with Russian help would harm that project.

Kosovo's two million Albanians would make up 22 per cent of Serbia's population, if they stayed. No one has come up with a plan to persuade or force them to do that.

They were not invited to vote in Serbia's last several elections, which they ignored, and Kostunica's offer of ''full autonomy'' foresees no role for them in the Serbian parliament.

Visiting neighbouring Albania on Sunday, Bush said he would keep talking to Russia, but at some point, ''sooner rather than later, you have to say enough is enough, Kosovo is independent''.

Diplomats say the West may take Kosovo to a Security Council vote this month, daring Moscow to veto. Serbia's Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic said Belgrade would immediately ''annul'' any unilateral declaration of independence.

''We warn of a terrible precedent... when the entire edifice of the international legal system would collapse like dominoes, and consequences would be awful,'' he said.

NATO and the UN are braced for huge protests and possible violence in Kosovo if Russia vetoes an independence resolution.

REUTERS GI BST2100