By Mark John WIESBADEN, Germany, March 1 (Reuters) - European Union and NATO defence chiefs on Thursday mapped out plans for steering the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo through a tense period while ensuring a future exit strategy for their armies. Two people were killed in clashes between police and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo this month and last week's bombing of three parked U.N. vehicles has underscored fears of unrest after the unveiling of plans for Kosovo's eventual independence. Yet the West is pushing ahead with a complex overhaul of its security presence in the territory. The United Nations, that at present administers Kosovo, is due to hand over policing to the EU. Several NATO members want to wind down the alliance's separate 16,000-plus peacekeeping mission there -- though there is a consensus they must maintain forces over the next months of difficult diplomacy to resolve Kosovo's future. "In the context of these negotiations it would be completely the wrong signal to start talking about troop reductions in Kosovo," German Foreign Minister Franz Josef Jung said before the meeting of EU defence ministers in the German city of Wiesbaden. The exact size of the EU's police mission -- tentatively set at 1,500 -- has yet to be confirmed and will be one focus of the two-day talks. Both the EU and NATO, which will be represented in Wiesbaden by NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, want assurances from the United Nations that it will maintain its UNMIK police force on the ground until the Europeans are ready. "It is important that we don't see gaps," de Hoop Scheffer told a security conference in Munich earlier this month. "Because if there were gaps, that would immediately have consequences for KFOR," he added, reflecting fears among nations contributing to the KFOR operation that they would be left to deal with any outbreaks of violence. RIOT CONTROL Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since a NATO bombing campaign drove Serb forces out of the overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian province in 1999. U.N. special envoy Martti Ahtisaari has made proposals setting Kosovo on the path to independence but Belgrade has rejected them and Serb ally Russia -- which holds a U.N. Security Council veto -- is against any imposed solution. EU planners are assessing how many police they will need to deploy with full executive powers to deal with possible riots in months ahead and to guard religious monuments that have previously been flashpoints for ethnic violence. The current range stands at between 300 and 600 officers but the final number has not been agreed. The remaining personnel in the mission will be police trainers, judges, prosecutors and other rule of law officials. Those nations with peacekeeping troops in Kosovo want the EU to ensure the police force will be as robust as possible. The United States, whose troops make up around 10 percent of the KFOR mission, has said it is prepared to stay for a few months more but is keen to wind down its contingent to focus the energies of its stretched military on Iraq and Afghanistan. Britain, also heavily engaged in those two countries, is also impatient to redeploy its troops from the Balkans once it is clear that security is under control. The EU already on Tuesday went ahead with a long-planned move to reduce its peace force from the war-torn former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia, confirming its 6,000-strong force there would shrink to around 2,500 by June this year.
