BRUSSELS, Belgium-NATO's peacekeeping forces in Kosovo will not take the role of policing the former Serb province if the EU law-and-order mission is delayed, an alliance official said Wednesday.

NATO spokesman James Appathurai said the alliance 16,000-strong force, known as KFOR, had not been trained or assigned to carry out policing duties in Kosovo, which declared independence in February.

Appathurai said it was for the United Nations and the European Union to figure out how to resolve current problems of continuing an international police mission there.

EU foreign ministers acknowledged earlier this week that their plans to take over the U.N.'s policing mission with a 2,200 police and justice law-and-order mission of their own was likely to be delayed for weeks, if not months, because of continuing disagreements with the U.N. over handing over its administration mission to the EU next month.

"It's an internal EU discussion, but we have an interest ... to ensure that rules of responsibilities are clear and sufficient resources are in place," Appathurai told reporters.

"To put it very simply, we don't want KFOR to be in the position of first responder, in that KFOR is not a police force. It should not be put in the position of being a police force. It is not mandated to play that role. Our soldiers are not equipped or trained to play that role."

"We do ask other international organizations to play that role," said Appathurai.

He added that NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York to discuss the matter on Wednesday.

The U.N., which has administered Kosovo since the end of the war between separatist rebels and Serbian forces in 1999, is due to hand over control to Kosovo's government in mid-June after ethnic Albanian leaders there declared independence from Serbia in February.

The EU mission is meant to support the rule of law in Kosovo after the hand-over, but there are disagreements with the U.N. over whether the EU mission's mandate should allow it to have a final say over Kosovo's affairs.

Russia, Serbia's ally at the U.N.'s Security Council, has blocked a formal hand-over of the U.N. mission to the EU because it opposes Kosovo's independence.

Some U.N. members, including Russia, consider the EU mission illegal because it has not been approved by the U.N. Security Council.

The EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said he would also meet with Ban on Thursday in Stockholm, Sweden, to discuss the diplomatic deadlock on the hand-over.

The EU earlier this year approved plans to send the mission, despite divisions among EU member states over whether to recognize Kosovo's independence.