BELGRADE (Reuters) — Once again Western strategy in the Balkans is under strain, with the United States calling clearly for independence for Kosovo while the 27-member European Union worries about legal technicalities and internal divisions. US President George W. Bush will set a deadline soon for independence for Serbia’s breakaway province if there is no deal at the United Nations with Russia, which, on Serbia’s behalf, opposes an independent Kosovo. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet on July 1-2, and may find compromise. If not, Bush says he will soon be ready to declare: “Enough is enough, Kosovo is independent”.But the European Union, which plans to assume supervision of the newly independent Kosovo for some years, feels it cannot take over from the UN administration in Kosovo unless it has that UN resolution as its legal mandate. “It’s the bigger EU members, mainly Germany, that have a big problem with it,” said a senior Western diplomat. “The smaller members would be willing to do it with a ‘coalition of the willing’ if Russia blocked a resolution.”

Besides legal cover, the EU wants to speak with one voice on the recognition of Kosovo. Without a resolution, there may be internal discord, clouding the prospect of Kosovo’s EU future. In 1999, Europe joined the United States in bombing Serbia for 78 days straight without a UN mandate, asserting that prevention of a humanitarian catastrophe gave NATO the right to act. Now, however, the EU wants more than a ‘coalition of the willing’ before stepping in to Kosovo with a 1,800-strong police and justice superstructure as foreseen by the UN blueprint.

Serbia’s 1998-99 counter-insurgency war in Kosovo was the last, disastrous throw of the dice by the late Serb autocrat Slobodan Milosevic, who also fomented war in Croatia and Bosnia.

The UN war crimes court says some 10,000 civilians, mostly Albanians, were killed before NATO allies, pushed by President Bill Clinton, put their qualms aside and launched an air war that drove Serb forces out of Kosovo, eight years ago this month. A UN plan for its independence has been delayed twice already to accommodate Serbia, mainly due to EU nerves over the possibility of it propelling ultranationalists back into power.

An ultranationalist backlash gives the EU nightmares. It could create a black hole in the future map of the Union. But the Americans are inclined to view this threat as a handy bogeyman Serbia uses to scare the West into getting its way.

Washington and the EU, however, agree that Serb insistence on retaining sovereignty over Kosovo while 90 percent of its population wants independence is an essentially hollow demand. “They have no desire to govern two million Kosovo Albanians, they just don’t want the border to change. We asked them who’s going to take control of Kosovo? And they said: ‘You are’,” said one senior Western diplomat who talks to Serbian leaders. Italian Foreign Minister Massimo d’Alema also said on Thursday Belgrade was not seriously seeking control of Kosovo. “If it’s unthinkable to have Serb sovereignty and at the same time they don’t want independence for Kosovo, what do they want,” he asked, “beyond the flag and (saving) wounded pride”.

Yesterday, US envoy Frank Wisner backed d’Alema’s line that the quality of a solution was more important than the timing, saying there could be some more time for talks to “make it clear to the world that that every avenue was pursued”. What the talks might possibly achieve beyond assuaging Russia is unclear, given Serbia’s unbending opposition. Belgrade’s offer of autonomy to Kosovo Albanians does not include representation in the Serb parliament. It sees them as citizens of Serbia but without a vote, corralled within Serb borders under a Serbian flag, but policed by foreigners. NATO leads 16,000 troops in Kosovo, 1,500 of them US.

The United States, says a diplomatic source, is making it clear in private to the EU that it could recognise Kosovo and walk away, if the Europeans can’t agree to back the move. “Serbia needs to get beyond Kosovo,” US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said in Paris this week after what one diplomat said was a fractious meeting with European allies. “It lost Kosovo ... I don’t believe you can turn the clock back.”