A British general given the key task of preventing bloodshed in Kosovo warned yesterday of the “high stakes” involved as the province prepares to declare independence from Serbia this week.

With tension in Kosovo building as the ethnic Albanian majority prepares to achieve its centuries-old goal of independence next Sunday, the job of keeping the country’s dominant former guerrilla leaders in line has fallen to Major General Martin Rutledge. “If my office got it wrong, we could significantly destabilize events that are going to unfold in the next few months,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “I don’t think that’s an overstatement. We are playing for quite high stakes.”

He not only faces the daunting task of preventing a violent backlash but also has the delicate job of dismissing the majority of the civil defense force’s senior officers after independence.

By next weekend, it will be seen whether a decade of U.N. protection and the investment of billions of dollars has borne fruit. It is expected that Kosovo will declare its “supervised” independence, supported by at least 100 countries in defiance of Serbia and its ally Russia.

Confounded by the inability of Belgrade, the Kosovo Serbs, and Albanians to agree to any compromise, the detailed recommendations made by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari will be implemented.

The Albanians who have “waited 3,000 years will welcome independence,” but the Kosovo Serbs are chilled by the prospect and fearful of being driven from their homes in a province historically considered Serbian territory.

To prevent that there are 16,000 U.N. peacekeepers and it is hoped they will do a better job than they did in 2004 when Serbs were burned from their homes and at least 19 civilians were killed as ethnic violence overran the province. For the last nine years the military ambitions of the former Kosovo Liberation Army’s leaders have been curtailed by absorbing its commanders into the Kosovo Protection Corps — a civil defense force with a fire and rescue wing, although its members are partially armed. It also includes 15 generals and 40 colonels out of a force of 3,000. The force is to halve in size post-independence.

“If we lost their trust they would have every opportunity to go off and do things we would not want them to,” General Rutledge, the KPC’s coordinator, said.

“They certainly know where the weapons are and how to get weapons so it is very important to dissolve them with dignity.”

The KPC high command could unleash a torrent of ethnic cleansing that would probably see most of the remaining 100,000 Serbs driven out from the population of two million Albanians.

“In this environment it only needs few people to do something inappropriate,” General Rutledge said at his office in the capital Pristina.