By Mark John

BRUSSELS, Feb 28 (Reuters) - The European Union and NATO will discuss on Thursday how to steer 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 is due to hand over policing to the EU and several NATO nations are seeking to wind down the alliance's separate eight-year-old peacekeeping mission there.

While NATO has confirmed it will maintain the 16,000-plus KFOR peacekeeping force at current levels for now, the exact size of the EU's police mission -- tentatively set at 1,500 -- has yet to be confirmed.

"We are watching very closely how the situation is evolving there," French General Jean-Paul Perruche, outgoing director general of the EU Military Staff, said before the two-day meeting of defence chiefs in the German city of Wiesbaden.

"It (the mission) can always be adapted to the new characteristics of the environment," he told a news briefing.

Perruche said both the EU and NATO, who will be represented in Wiesbaden by Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, wanted assurances from the United Nations that it would maintain its UNMIK police force on the ground until the Europeans were 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 the months ahead and to guard the religious monuments that have previously been flashpoints for ethnic violence.

Perruche said the range currently stood at between 300 to 600 officers but the final number had not been settled. 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.

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