Russia ready for re-match over Kosovo

By Douglas Hamilton - Analysis

SLATINA, Serbia (Reuters) - When the Russians tangled with the West over Kosovo nine years ago, they bit off more than they could chew and eventually backed down.

A far more confident Russia now is poised for a re-match on behalf of its Serb ally, after Kosovo Albanians declare the province independent of Serbia on Sunday.

Russia can't stop independence but has blocked recognition by the United Nations, where it plans a legal challenge. This could help Serbia deprive the new state of the Serb-majority enclave in the hinterland of the northern city of Mitrovica.

It may also redress an affront dating back to June 11, 1999.

"We were surprised that day," recalled Milazim Zogiani in his village overlooking Kosovo's main airport near the capital, Pristina. "We didn't expect the Russians. They came suddenly."

Like all Kosovo Albanians, Zogiani was eagerly awaiting the arrival of 45,000 NATO troops as Serb forces began a withdrawal compelled by 78 days of allied bombing to end ethnic-cleansing ordered by the late Serb autocrat Slobodan Milosevic.

Instead, he saw a Russian column sweep into the airport, completing a bold dash from Bosnia through Serbia to seize the runway with 200 soldiers before NATO could even get there, and be greeted as heroes by Serbs all along their way.

"The main thing was secrecy," said a Russian soldier in the operation, now a senior paratroop officer. "What was a sensation for the world took weeks of thorough preparations for us."

A senior Western diplomat who witnessed events said: "There was a very serious plan to partition Kosovo and they were going to do it by force majeure", after NATO had rejected Moscow's proposal to divide Kosovo into three slices, restricting NATO to the south.

EFFECTIVELY PARTITIONED

A Russian-held airport was not in the Western script. NATO wondered if there had been a coup, if ailing President Boris Yeltsin was aware. The foreign ministry said it knew nothing.

But the defence ministry, despite many denials, was going ahead with a plan to bring in up to 10,000 troops, claim a Mitrovica sector, and deny NATO overall command.

"Kosovo would be effectively partitioned," NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark wrote in his minute-by-minute record of the crisis. NATO's war would have "achieved almost nothing".

British troops arrived but the Russians refused to budge, triggering a blizzard of crisis phone calls as NATO generals and leaders disputed the high-risk responses under consideration.

The standoff was dismissed as an annoying sideshow to the big event of NATO deployment, but confidential accounts published later show it was anything but.