BERLIN, April 2 (Reuters) - Germany has sent an additional 550 troops to Kosovo amid fears of an increase in violence as negotiations on the province's status reach a critical stage, Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung told a newspaper. "We are worried that the situation could become more dangerous during the talks on Kosovo's political future," Jung told the Monday edition of German daily Die Welt. "Because of this, we have sent an additional ORF (Operation Reserve Force) battalion to Kosovo." A spokesman for the ministry said the roughly 550-strong deployment brought Germany's total contingent in Kosovo to 2,923 troops. He said the new battalion, which arrived in mid-March, was slated to stay in the province until the end of April, but could remain longer if the situation on the ground warranted it. The southern Serbian province has been run by the United Nations since 1999, when NATO bombs drove out Serb forces accused of atrocities in a two-year war with ethnic Albanian separatist guerrillas. The U.N. Security Council will soon begin debating a proposal by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari that would give the territory independence from Serbia, supervised by the European Union and secured by NATO. The United States, the EU and NATO all support the proposal, but Russia has backed its Balkan ally Serbia in opposing it. Western powers fear a revolt by the 90-percent ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo if the U.N. Security Council fails to endorse the plan.
