Britain ends Kosovo standby troop commitment

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is ending its commitment to NATO's standby Balkan peacekeeping force after helping secure a "stable, if fragile" situation in Kosovo, the defense minister said on Wednesday.

Britain sent a reserve battalion to Kosovo in June for a four-week stint when tensions were high between the ethnic Albanian majority and the ethnic Serb minority following a declaration of independence from Serbia.

"Following a review of the security situation in Kosovo and our wider military commitments, the Foreign Secretary and I have agreed that the UK contribution to the ORF (Operational Reserve Force) will cease on 31 December, 2008," defense minister John Hutton said in a statement.

The decision comes as Britain is expected to change its deployment of forces in two other theatres -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- where a total of 12,000 troops are based.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said there will be a "fundamental change of mission" in Iraq early next year, which defense sources say will involve drawing down troops from around 4,000 to 1,500 or fewer.

At the same time, there is expected to be a gradual ramping up of troops in Afghanistan, where 8,000 are based but highly overstretched in their two-year campaign to tackle the Taliban in the restive southern province of Helmand.

Ending the commitment in Kosovo should make a larger pool of troops available to be deployed in Afghanistan, where security is worsening.

"The major milestones in Kosovo's independence have passed without incident and the security situation in Kosovo is stable, if fragile," Hutton said.

The U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday approved a request by Serbia to ask a U.N. court if Kosovo's secession was legal, a move many Western states fear will slow Kosovo's integration into the world community.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague is expected to take one to two years to rule.

About 175 British service personnel remain in Kosovo with the 15,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force, KFOR, which ORF supports, and will continue to contribute intelligence capabilities.

(Reporting by Avril Ormsby and Luke Baker; editing by David Clarke and Philippa Fletcher)