Brussels - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Kosovo's split from Serbia was a "European success," while his Spanish counterpart, Miguel Angel Moratinos saw it as "violation of international law."

Kosovo declared independence a year ago, on February 17, 2008, prompting rifts withing the EU, in which 22 of the 27 member-states recognized the new country.

Risks and side-effects of Kosovo's separation were also being appraised worldwide, partly because Kosovo - roughly one-third of Belgium in size - and its Albanian majority would continue to depend on handouts from rich nations for an indefinite future.

The outline of immediate financial needs was visible at the July conference in Brussels last year, when 65 donors pledged 1.2 billion euros (1.55 billion dollars) in development aid to Kosovo.

Of that, 500 million is to come from the EU budget and another 300 million from individual member-states.

The EU also wanted quickly to bolster the still dubious rule of law in Kosovo, but it took nearly a year, until late December, to deploy its law-enforcing mission the Eulex.

The cause for delay was political rather than financial, as the 205-million euro start-up bill of sending 1,900 police, judges, prosecutors and customs officials to the Balkans was footed in advance.

The EU struggled for months to find a formula allowing Eulex to co-exist with the United Nations mission, the UNMIK, which had governed Kosovo over the previous nine years.

UNMIK first arrived in June 1999, after NATO had ousted Belgrade's security forces from Kosovo in a 78-day bombing campaign aimed at ending a bloody crackdown on the Albanians.

The West and Pristina wanted Eulex to replace UNMIK, but that plan flopped when Russia blocked the pullout of UNMIK by threatening a veto in the Security Council.

Moscow warned Washington and Brussels that backing Pristina's secession was a "dangerous precedent" and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke of a possible "chain reaction" in the Balkans and worldwide if Serbia's territorial integrity was violated.

The EU argued that Kosovo was an isolated case and not a precedent-setter. Yet Moscow saw it differently: As early as August, it recognized Georgia's breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Nevertheless, EU's top diplomat Javier Solana and most EU leaders were convinced that there was no alternative to independence for Kosovo.

Their position on Kosovo had been formed in the wake of decades of repression of Kosovo Albanians and after all efforts to inspire Serbs and Albanians into a new coexistence failed miserably.

Kosovo was also presented as an example of the "European perspective" for the Western Balkans, demonstrating that any country with a strong rule of law may eventually join the EU.

Serbia may hope for a quick membership of the EU, though only when it settles the issue of war crime suspects and when it gives up its claim on Kosovo.

And analysts agree that alhough Brussels is trying to lure Kosovo and Serbia with the vision of EU membership, their promotion to the bloc at the moment appears a very distant prospect. (dpa)