Serbs say West wants Kosovo as a "NATO state"

BELGRADE, Aug 15 (Reuters) Serbs campaigning against independence for the breakaway province of Kosovo have accused the West of seeking a ''NATO state'' in the Balkans.

A number of politicians say NATO allies are determined to carve out the new state from Serbian territory by backing the independence demands of Kosovo's 90 percent Albanian majority.

To block an independence resolution on Kosovo at the United Nations, Serbia has enlisted the help of veto-holder Russia and President Vladimir Putin, frequently opposed to NATO goals.

Russia today accused the West of pursuing Kosovo independence under threat of Albanian ''violence and anarchy''.

In an article, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow's Western partners were ''inclined to give in to blackmail.'' Serbia's tilt towards Moscow has some Serb commentators wondering if the government is seriously preparing to abandon its pro-Western goals and policies if Kosovo is lost.

The ''NATO state'' idea has cropped up in various comments over the past week. It appeared to originate with Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, whose coalition government aspires to NATO membership.

Kostunica has also threatened to curtail relations with any country which may eventually decide to recognise Kosovo as independent -- the major NATO powers among others.

And a newspaper close to the government has suggested that Serbia would also end its bid for European Union membership. According to the Minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, NATO plans to make Kosovo virtually its own territory and a Kostunica spokesman said the US military base, Camp Bondsteel, would be its capital.

Samardzic told the official news agency Tanjug today that NATO wants Kosovo as a base to ''serve its geopolitical and strategic goals as well as mafia clans''.

He urged Washington to give up ''the project of creating a satellite, army barracks, state on foreign territory'' as Serbs and Kosovo Albanians begin a new and probably final round of talks seeking compromise over the province's future.

In a comment likely to anger the Western alliance, the minister said the real goal of NATO's 1999 air war was ''the creation of the NATO state that would be independent Kosovo''.

NATO says the motives for its military intervention, the alliance's first war, were purely humanitarian.

Alliance aircraft bombed targets for 78 days to compel the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his forces from Kosovo where they were conducting a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing under the guise of fighting Albanian insurgents.

Between 7,500 and 12,000 civilians were killed between 1998 and 1999, mainly ethnic Albanians. Kosovo has been run by the United Nations and patrolled by a NATO-led force since 1999.

Reuters RSA DB2041