Balkans under control, European defense chiefs say

BRDO, Slovenia (Reuters) - European defense chiefs said on Thursday NATO and EU troops had the security situation in the Balkans under control, and played down the risk of new violence there after Kosovo's secession from Serbia.

defense ministers met in Slovenia to review security arrangements for the region as hundreds of Serb army veterans threw rocks at Kosovo riot police on the border with Serbia in a renewed protest at the independence move.

Troops from NATO's 17,000-strong KFOR force intervened on Tuesday to secure Kosovo's northern borders after an earlier challenge by ethnic Serbs.

German defense Minister Franz Josef Jung acknowledged that Tuesday's events showed local police in Kosovo could not ensure security by themselves but said there was good cooperation on the ground between NATO and the United Nations personnel.

"In particular thanks to the support of KFOR, things are under control," Jung told reporters at the talks, which took place in the grounds of Brdo castle outside Ljubljana, which late Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito made his summer retreat.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who like Jung visited Kosovo this week, said the "situation as a whole is calm".

"Today is much calmer than yesterday. I think it will evolve in that direction," he told a news conference after the talks.

Ministers discussed a long-term plan to train local Kosovo security forces -- starting with a 3,000-strong civilian emergency Kosovo Protection Corp -- so that one day they could start replacing NATO troops. But Jung and other officials stressed KFOR would remain necessary for some time.

CREDIBILITY AT STAKE

While NATO is responsible for security in Kosovo, the EU has 2,500 troops stationed in Bosnia in a peace force inherited from NATO in 2004, and there are concerns that tensions from Kosovo could spill over and stir up Bosnia's ethnic mix.

Ministers reaffirmed a decision in December to suspend an earlier plan to wind down the Bosnia peace force, because of the risk that Bosnia's Serbs could make their own bid to split from the state created after the 1992-95 war.

"It must maintain its presence as long as necessary," Slovene defense Minister Karl Erjavec told a news conference.

Solana noted that Bosnian Serbs were due to hold a protest rally on Thursday but saw no signs so far of trouble.

"We have our intelligence that the situation will evolve in a calm manner," he said.

The EU is acutely aware that for its ambitions to become a global security player to be credible, it must show the world it can bring stability to the Balkans after its glaring failure to halt the wars of the 1990s.

The bloc has launched a 2,000-strong mission to supervise the Kosovo police and judicial sector despite the declaration of local Serbs, backed by Belgrade and Russia, that the EU presence is illegitimate and without a proper U.N. mandate.

EU officials stress that the operation, which will take over powers from the existing U.N. operation by mid-June, is mostly there to mentor and advise Kosovo police and judges rather than to be in the front line of violence.

But it does have four anti-riot units and, in the run-up to Kosovo's independence declaration on Sunday, the mission was increased from 1,800 personnel to just over 2,000.

(Editing by Andrew Roche)