(PRISTINA) - The United Nations will begin cutting back its Kosovo staff in the upcoming weeks to make way for a mission of the European Union, officials said Monday.

"The plan is that we will downsize by 70 percent by late autumn this year," Alexander Ivanko, spokesman for the UN's interim mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), told AFP.

The reconfiguration of UNMIK, which comes almost six months since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, has been backed by Western powers but rejected by Belgrade and its ally Russia.

UNMIK departments dealing with civil administration, the return of people displaced by war and minorities would cease to exist as of Monday next week, said Ivanko.

"This concerns about 150 staff (who would) start getting termination letters next week," he said.

UNMIK currently has around 600 international staff on the ground in Kosovo, where it also employs about 1,100 locals.

The head of the UN mission, Lamberto Zannier, told the UN Security Council last month that his legal authority in Kosovo had been curtailed since a new constitution entered into force on June 15.

UNMIK has been in Kosovo since mid-1999, when a NATO bombing campaign ousted Serbian forces waging a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatist forces and their civilian supporters.

It is to be gradually replaced by EULEX, a mission of the European Union, as laid out in a plan devised by UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari.

The parliament of Kosovo, an ethnic Albanian-majority southern province of Serbia, unilaterally declared independence on February 17. Its statehood has since been recognised by 45 countries.

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