By Ellie Tzortzi

BELGRADE, Dec 18 (Reuters) - When Serbia's leaders appeal to the United Nations on Wednesday to block independence for its breakaway Kosovo province, it will be a plea based on history, emotion and the bitterness of 15 years of defeats.

It will also be a reminder to the West that although nationalist Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic is dead, the hardline defiance and victim complex he exploited in his people is still part of the national psyche.

"Most Serbs have never visited Kosovo and don't want to go to Kosovo, but they see it as part of their founding legend," said James Lyon, senior Balkans adviser of the International Crisis Group think-tank.

Serbs are brought up on poems of the medieval kingdom, defeated by the Ottomans in the epic Kosovo battle of 1389. The national myths are tied to the symbolism of a land that is home to the Serbian Orthodox church and hundreds of monasteries.

"Even for Serbs who are not religious, Kosovo is a defining point," Lyon said. "Once you bring up Kosovo, rationality goes out the window. Serbs are so sold on this legend and myth, they don't know what the reality is."

The U.N. Security Council meets on Wednesday to discuss Kosovo's future after negotiations failed to secure agreement. The Kosovo Albanians have said they plan to declare independence within months, despite Serbia's fierce opposition.

Multi-ethnic as far back as the Middle Ages and contested by warring neighbours, Kosovo had a mostly Albanian population by the early 1900s. In Josip Broz Tito's socialist Yugoslavia after World War Two, it had a high degree of autonomy and relative social and ethnic peace.

Milosevic's rise to power -- heralded by a bellicose speech he delivered in Kosovo in 1989 -- rolled back many of the rights of the 90-percent Albanian majority.

When a guerrilla war against Serb forces began in 1998, the crackdown was brutal. About 10,000 civilians were killed, mostly Albanians, and 1 million were expelled for months.

WESTERN INTERVENTION

NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999 until Milosevic withdrew troops. The U.N. took over Kosovo, keeping a lid on Albanian independence dreams.

Croatia and Bosnia fought free of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia to internationally recognised independence but Serbia kept a fig leaf of sovereignty over Kosovo through U.N. resolution 1244.

Serbs were never told they had been defeated, said Srdjan Bogosavljevic, analyst at Strategic Marketing polling agency.

"Generals were given medals and Milosevic presented it as a big victory," he said. "All those in power since have stuck to that line, never spelling out that Serbia lost the war. This denial will last as long as the political elite insists on it."

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica is at the vanguard of the new battle for Kosovo. Once hailed by the West as a moderate, he now epitomises the hardline challenge to the West.

"For us, Kosovo independence does not exist and cannot be," he told Russian television last week. If the West recognises Kosovo it would be to create "a puppet state", but Serbia was relying on Russia to block U.N. recognition forever, he said.

Tim Judah, an author and commentator on the Balkans, said Serbs would feel they would be losing yet another war, although many mistrusted their politicians and knew Kosovo was lost.

"There is a feeling that we are at the end, that the destruction of Yugoslavia started in Kosovo and will end in Kosovo," Judah said. "But Kosovo has another resonance, it's more important historically and spiritually."

MAXIMUM AUTONOMY

Serbia has offered the Albanians "maximum autonomy", all the trappings of statehood without the borders, army and U.N. seat.

A plan to give Kosovo independence under European Union supervision was blocked by Russia but a majority of EU member states plan to implement it anyway.

Some 70 percent of Serbs want Serbia to join the wealthy EU, government polls say. But 75 percent would reject membership if it were conditioned on Serbia recognising an independent Kosovo.

Kosovo is expected to declare independence in the first few months of 2008. Analysts expect protests, hardline rhetoric and maybe a resurgence of nationalism or a symbolic tilt to Russia.

"The 'Greater Serbia' idea feeds on crisis," said Andjelko Milardovic of the Zagreb-based Centre for Political Studies. "It would take a transformation of Serbian society, and improvement of social and economic conditions, for it to lose its appeal."

The EU has offered Serbia a fast track to membership to help overcome the loss of Kosovo, once it arrests the last four Serbs wanted by the Hague war crimes tribunal.

No matter what the West does, Serbia's destiny is in the hands of rival leaders Kostunica and President Boris Tadic. Tadic, seen as a pro-Western moderate, faces ultra-nationalist Tomislav Nikolic in a presidential election next month.

"There is an ideological conflict going on right now," Judah said. "How that conflict is resolved in the next weeks and months will determine Serbia's future in the next 10 years." (Editing by Timothy Heritage)

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