Balkans tensions to dominate EU defense talks

By Mark John

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU defense ministers will review security arrangements in the Balkans on Thursday after Kosovo's secession from Serbia sparked border violence that was a reminder of the region's simmering ethnic tensions.

While NATO provides the bulk of security in the region with its 17,000-strong KFOR force -- which on Tuesday intervened to secure Kosovo's northern borders after a challenge by ethnic Serbs -- the EU has a small but increasingly key presence there.

Aside from a 2,000-strong mission being deployed to oversee Kosovo's police and judicial sector, the 27-member bloc has 2,500 troops stationed in Bosnia that could be severely tested if there is any spillover of tensions from Kosovo.

"There will be a discussion about the prolongation of the mission," said a spokesman for EU President Slovenia, which will be hosting two days of talks just outside the capital Ljubljana.

EU defense chiefs, facing strains on their armies in security missions from Afghanistan to Lebanon, were keen to have wound down by now the Bosnian stabilization operation they inherited from NATO in 2004.

Yet feuding among Bosnia's Serbs, Croats and Muslims has been exacerbated by the determination of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders to secede from Serbia and some analysts warn of Bosnian Serbs splitting from the state created under the Dayton peace accords that ended the 1992-95.

While that is only a worst-case scenario for now, such concerns prompted EU states to declare last December that the EU force would remain in Bosnia for as long as necessary, and the United Nations extended its mandate through to November 2008.

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

The bloc will want to make sure the fledgling rule of law mission in Kosovo also has adequate protection after local Serbs, backed by Belgrade and Russia, declared the EU presence illegitimate and vowed not to accept its authority.

EU officials stress the operation, which is being deployed and 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 days leading up to Kosovo's independence declaration on Sunday, the overall size of the mission was raised slightly from 1,800 personnel to a current strength of just over 2,000.

Aside from the Balkans, ministers are set to review moves to send 3,700 EU peacekeepers to eastern Chad and Central African Republic to protect refugees from Sudan's Darfur conflict after an upsurge in violence temporarily halted the deployment.

(Editing by Giles Elgood)