(VIENNA) - Serbia's plans to hold municipal elections in Kosovo next month, despite the province's newly proclaimed independence, would violate the UN's mandate in the region, an international steering group for Kosovo said Thursday.

The elections, which Belgrade plans to hold on May 11 along with its own parliamentary elections, "would represent a violation of UNMIK's exclusive competence under UN Security Council Resolution 1244," the EU's representative on Kosovo and head of the International Steering Group (ISG), Pieter Feith, told journalists here.

UNMIK is the United Nations mission which has administered Kosovo since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign drove out Serbian forces waging a brutal crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians.

The mission itself recently condemned Belgrade's plans to hold elections in 23 Serb-dominated towns in Kosovo. But officials did not say how they would concretely oppose them if Serbia actually went ahead with the plans.

Speaking after the second meeting of the ISG since it was set up at the end of February, Feith said that he was less concerned about Serbia's own elections being held the same day.

Those polls were "less of a concern because it is recognised also by the government of Kosovo that Serbs who have double nationality should be entitled to participate in these elections," Feith said.

Asked about the planned replacement of UNMIK with a 1,900-strong EU mission called EULEX, Feith said that a date had not yet been fixed.

"The start of the EULEX was not on the agenda" of the ISG, he said. "This is a matter for the UN and EU to take further in consultation."

In principle, the EULEX mission should take over after Kosovo's constitution, adopted on April 9, comes into effect on June 15.

The ISG was set up in Vienna in February by 15 countries that have recognised Kosovo, in accordance with UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari's plan for the "internationally supervised independence" of the province which has an ethnic Albanian majority and a Serb population of only 120,000.

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