Incoming EU president urges caution on Kosovo

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union should tread cautiously in forging a solution to Kosovo's status and offer Serbia the prospect of EU candidate status as an inducement, the next president of the 27-nation bloc said on Tuesday.

Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel warned against a rush to proclaim the breakaway Serbian province independent, saying the EU needed a gradual glide-path to remain united.

"It will not go as fast as some people would like to have it," Rupel told Reuters in an interview a day after international mediation efforts ended without agreement.

"I don't think events should precipitate now," said the man whose ex-Yugoslav republic takes the EU helm for six months from January, inheriting a huge diplomatic challenge in the Balkans.

"The thinking of EU ministers is that we should go slowly, rationally," he said after foreign ministers discussed the way forward on Monday.

Rupel said he was encouraged by the fact that leaders of Kosovo's overwhelming Albanian majority had ruled out an immediate unilateral declaration of independence and pledged to work in consultation with Europe.

"We would like to agree with them on how to go about it," he said. "We want to make sure there is no crisis."

But with the weary modesty of a veteran of Balkan politics, he added: "Of course, I'm not in control of the situation."

He sketched out a series of steps involving talks between the EU and Pristina, and separately with Belgrade and Kosovo's Serb minority, leading to the deployment of EU police and justice missions to help stabilize the territory.

NOT IN CONTROL

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica warned the EU on Tuesday that sending in such a supervisory presence would be illegal without a new U.N. Security Council resolution.

However, Rupel said the EU was moving to the same view as NATO that the existing Security Council resolution 1244, adopted in 1999 after NATO air forces drove Serbian troops out of Kosovo, provided an adequate legal basis for the continued presence of outside peacekeepers and overseers.

He hinted that the EU might not insist that Serbia hand over former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal before it could sign a first agreement on the road towards EU membership.

"We should listen carefully to what our Serbian friends are telling us," Rupel said. "President Tadic keeps saying that they are doing everything they can to cooperate with the tribunal."

While he did not doubt the word of outgoing chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte, he said: "There are different forces in Serbia. It seems sometimes the people who are on top are not in control."

Rupel suggested that Del Ponte's successor, who takes office next month, might take a different view.

Slovenia, the only former Yugoslav state to have achieved EU membership so far, hopes to advance the European integration process for all Western Balkans countries on its watch, he said.

"Certainly there is a reserved place for Serbia in the EU," he said.

Asked whether the EU should delay any decision on Kosovo's status until after a Serbian presidential election provisionally expected on January 20, he said the two events should not be connected under any circumstances.

But he added: "We will be telling our Serbian friends they are welcome. Our task will be organize as many EU events with Serbia as possible."

(Editing by Matthew Tostevin)