MOSCOW-Moscow's envoy to NATO warned Friday that Russia may turn to "brute military force" to earn respect on the world scene if all EU nations recognize Kosovo's independence and NATO oversteps its authority in Kosovo.

However, Dmitry Rogozin said Russia was not going to get involved in any armed confrontation over Kosovo.

He said some Western countries were ruining the entire system of international law by recognizing Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia.

"If the European Union works out a single position and NATO goes beyond its current mandate in Kosovo, these organizations will conflict with the United Nations," Rogozin said in a televised hookup from Brussels.

"And we, I think, will proceed from an assumption that to be respected, we have to use brute military force," he said.

Rogozin said Moscow was alarmed by reports that authorities Kosovo had closed the border with Serbia.

Kosovo's borders with Serbia are patrolled by local authorities but main responsibility for security lies with NATO peacekeepers. NATO has more than 16,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo.

Rogozin said Moscow will watch closely to ensure that NATO forces in Kosovo do not overstep their U.N. mandate.

"Under no circumstances should the alliance get involved in politics," Rogozin said. "It must remain neutral."

But he said Russia would not get involved in any armed confrontation over Kosovo.

"I can guarantee you that there will be no war between Russia and NATO over Kosovo" though the Kosovo issue "will certainly hamper our dialogue," he said.

Rogozin said that the West has made "a strategic mistake, similar to the invasion of Iraq," by backing Kosovo's independence.

"We are talking about the destruction of the international security system. This threatens to inflame conflicts in all parts of the world," he said.

Rogozin called the violent protests in the Serbian capital against Kosovo's independence "national wrath that will be hard to curb," and accused the West of making "a step toward a very cruel and emotional ethnic conflict" in the Balkans.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said Moscow regretted Thursday's violent protests in Belgrade during which rioters broke into the U.S. Embassy and attacked other Western embassies.

Kamynin blamed the unrest on the Western nations' decision to back Kosovo's independence, saying they "should have realized the consequences," the Interfax news agency reported Friday.

More than a dozen nations have recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany.

Russia, China and others, including EU member Spain, have rejected the unilateral declaration by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership.

Predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo, which has been governed by a U.N. mission and patrolled by NATO peacekeepers since 1999, had been widely expected to declare independence from Serbia after internationally mediated talks on its future fell apart last year.