By Ellie Tzortzi

BELGRADE, March 27 (Reuters) - Serbia is convinced Russia will knock down a plan giving supervised independence to the breakaway Kosovo province with a "historic veto" at the U.N. Security Council, Serbia's prime minister said on Tuesday.

"We are convinced the proposal will fail in the Security Council and that will open a door to a new negotiation process with a new mediator," Vojislav Kostunica said in a statement.

United Nations envoy Martti Ahtisaari delivered the proposal to the Security Council on Monday after a year of talks between Belgrade and leaders of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

The United States and European Union have backed the plan, which would hand Kosovo independence under an EU overseer, eight years after a NATO bombing campaign drove the forces of late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic from the territory.

"A Russian veto in the Security Council on the Ahtisaari plan to carve up Serbia, to arbitrarily redraw our state borders, and a Russian veto on the brutal seizure of 15 percent of Serbian territory is... of historic significance for Serbia and the Serbian people," Kostunica said.

Washington and Brussels have warned of unrest if Albanians are denied independence or forced to wait much longer. They want a resolution endorsing the plan by summer.

Veto holder Russia has given mixed signals as to whether it will block the plan and has called for talks to continue. It says a solution acceptable to both Albanians and Serbs -- something Western analysts say is impossible -- must be found.

The Kosovo Albanians are also trying to "get through" to Russia, said Skender Hyseni, spokesman for Kosovo's negotiators.

"The aim is to convince the Russians to join the group of countries which has already accepted the plan," Hyseni said. "The feeling in New York is that Kosovo should be resolved as soon as possible. We cannot say when our patience will end."

Ten thousand Albanians died and almost one million fled during Serbia's 1998-99 counter-insurgency war against Albanian separatist guerrillas. Serbia says it would never accept the amputation of what it calls its cultural heartland.

But Serb media have floated the idea of partitioning the province along the river Ibar, which separates the mainly Albanian south from a northern corner that is home to just under half of Kosovo's 100,000 remaining Serbs.

Tens of thousands of Serbs fled revenge attacks with the end of the war and the deployment of a NATO peacekeeping force, which currently numbers 16,500 soldiers. Serbs who stayed on complain of discrimination, harassment and violence.

"It is more probable that Serbia accepts partition of the province than supervised independence," wrote top-selling daily Blic on Tuesday.

"The international community sees partition as more dangerous than independence, but even diplomats in Kosovo know partition is an option dictated by the situation on the ground."

(Additional reporting by Matt Robinson, Fatos Bytyci and Ljilja Cvekic)

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