France backs Kosovo EU entry hopes

(PARIS) - France's President Nicolas Sarkozy assured Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of Kosovo on Monday that Paris would back its entry into the European Union despite controversy over its independence.

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in February last year, in the teeth of fierce opposition from Belgrade, and so far only 60 countries around the world have recognised the former Serbian province.

France and another 21 of the 27 members of the European Union support Kosovo's independence, as does the United States, but Serbia has the backing of Russia and of countries like Spain with their own breakaway regions.

"The president told Prime Minister Thaci that Kosovo's independence was irreversible. Kosovo has a future, like the rest of the Balkans, in the European Union," said an official in Sarkozy's office after the pair met.

"France supports this future and will help Kosovo join the Union."

Nevertheless, the French official underlined that Sarkozy had also warned Thaci, as he had earlier warned Serbia's President Boris Tadic, that Kosovo and Serbia must find a way to live together in peace.

In 1999 NATO forces took control of Kosovo after a 78-day war against Serbia, aiming to halt a crackdown on separatists among the region's ethnic Albanian majority by forces under then president Slobodan Milosevic.

Between the end of the war and 2008, the territory was administered by the United Nations and NATO forces. Serbia has never abandoned its sovereignty claim over the area, which includes important Serb religious sites.

"Kosovo's future is in the European Union and NATO," said Thaci, a former commander in the separatist guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army. "We are building a democratic state in Kosovo. This first year has been very successful."

Separately, a senior US official in Brussels said the alliance was planning to cut its troop numbers in Kosovo by a third from 15,000 to 10,000 by January next year, adopting a "deterrence presence."