EU leaders agree to send mission to Kosovo

BRUSSELS, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- European Union leaders agreed to dispatch a police and civilian mission to Serbia's independence-seeking, mainly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo province.

Portugese Prime Minister Jose Socrates in Brussels Friday said the decision proves the EU is serious about playing a major role in resolving the Kosovo issue, Deutsche Welle reported.

Socrates said the EU mission is to be deployed in Kosovo after Christmas holidays. Officials at the Brussels meeting indicated the EU mission would amount to 1,800 people.

Two years of Serb-ethnic Albanian talks on Kosovo's future status have recently ended without agreement, leaving it to the U.N. Security Council to try to help in resolving it.

The Serbian government in Belgrade, representing 100,000 Serbs living in Kosovo, is offering autonomy to its southern province, while leaders of ethnic-Albanians, who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's 1.9 million population, insist on independence from Serbia.

Kosovo, formally still Serbia's province, has been U.N.-governed territory since 1999, when NATO troops were deployed to curb ethnic conflicts.