By Douglas Hamilton

BELGRADE, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica is so confident that Russia will veto Western-backed independence for Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo that he is already looking forward to the victory party.

But some fear that if Serbia succeeds in derailing this project of European Union and United States diplomacy with the help of Russian muscle, it may be trading its EU and NATO membership prospects for a precarious perch in Moscow.

If so, it would be the only Balkan state to face East by choice. Ex-Soviet satellites Bulgaria and Romania have joined ex-Yugoslav republic Slovenia in the EU and NATO. Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Albania share the same aim.

"If we are going into the EU then we have to behave like Europeans and adopt their values," said Zoran Ostojic of Serbia's Civic Alliance, one of the very few to say Kosovo independence is inevitable and urge Serbs to accept it.

"If we are going to be the vanguard of Russian interests here then they will dictate our government and we will be some kind of black hole," he said.

Kosovo was seized by NATO forces in 1999 to halt Serb ethnic cleansing of its 90 percent Albanian majority in a counter- insurgency war, and has been run by the United Nations since.

The bombing of Serbia to this end was NATO's first use of force in its history, a defining moment that put "humanitarian intervention" above legal and territorial sovereignty.

Kosovo's Albanians expect to win independence by the autumn.

In a session of the Serbian parliament last week, 225 of the 250 deputies declared that "Serbia rejects" Kosovo independence.

But analysts saw it as a blame-sharing ploy, papering over cracks that will open wide when Kostunica and President Boris Tadic try to forge a coalition after Serbia's inconclusive Jan. 21 election.

Parliament's "rejection front" in reality spans a wide spectrum of views on Kosovo, which cannot easily be reconciled.

The ultranationalist Radicals, Serbia's biggest party, would declare Kosovo "occupied territory" if a solution were imposed, creating a territorial scar that might not heal for decades.

Kostunica has not endorsed the idea but says Serbia would curb ties with any capital which recognises Kosovo. Diplomats say that would apply to Washington, London, Paris and Berlin.

Kostunica also says it is "unthinkable that the United Nations would snatch territory away from a member state", as proposed by U.N. mediator Martti Ahtisaari. He predicts that "the Security Council will undoubtedly reject his proposal".

WARNING OF LOSS

President Tadic's Democratic Party, by contrast, wants no diplomatic cut-off threat. Far from placing absolute trust in Moscow's Kosovo policy, it warns Serbs of the possible loss of the mountainous land wreathed in the history of their nation.

Ahtisaari sees no hope of compromise in a final round of Serb-Albanian talks beginning on Wednesday in Vienna, and expects to submit his plan to the Security Council in mid-March.

The West believes there is no way that Kosovo's two million ethnic Albanians will remain part of a country whose troops, under the late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic, killed 10,000 of their people in the 1998-99 war and drove out 800,000.

"There is no realistic alternative to the U.N. proposal," said Ahtisaari deputy Albert Rohan. Doing nothing risks a fresh conflict that could threaten the entire region.

A top Kostunica aide, Vladeta Jankovic, responded that the West simply thinks "everything can be bought and sold."

The EU and NATO offer a fast track to membership if Serbia is "constructive" in Kosovo, but have made no open threat to freeze Serbia out if it defies them by wrecking Ahtisaari's plan.

Western powers want to avoid provoking any lurch to the ultranationalist right, said a senior EU diplomat. "No one wants Belgrade to become a Minsk," he added, using the capital of Belarus as a synonym for paranoid, anti-Western autocracy.

While Kostunica anticipates a "principled stand" on Kosovo by the Kremlin, many Serbs are sceptical, recalling that Russia has made promises but left its Slav cousins in the lurch before.

"If Russia imposes its veto in the Security Council it will do so out of its own interests, not Serbia's," said analyst Zoran Dragisic. But a veto was unlikely, because Kosovo would be thrashed out one way or another to avoid deadlock, he said.

Turning to Russia was no longer a geopolitical option, and certainly not the destiny favoured by most Serbs, he said.

Analysts see the blame for Kosovo's loss already being parcelled out, and perhaps Moscow too will get a slice.

(Additional reporting by Beti Bilandzic, David Brunnstrom)

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