(Reuters) - Kosovo said Western recognition of its independence was coming any minute on Monday, but the first EU decision went against the new republic as Spain said "no".
"We expect to be recognised by the first countries any minute," Prime Minister Hashim Thaci told an open meeting of his cabinet a day after the breakaway majority Albanian territory declared independence from Serbia.
Most of the European Union's 27 members and the United States are ready to recognise Kosovo. But as EU foreign ministers met in Brussels to confer, Spain said it had made up its mind not to do so.
"The government of Spain will not recognise the unilateral act proclaimed yesterday by the assembly of Kosovo," Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told reporters.
"We will not recognise because we consider ... this does not respect international law," said the minister, whose country is grappling with separatist movements of its own.
Cyprus, Greece, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania have also indicated they will not recognise.
But Kosovo is confident that London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Washington and up to 100 other governments will accept its new status as the world's 193rd country, the sixth to be created from the collapse of Yugoslavia.
The EU appealed for calm in the Balkans and unity in Europe as ministers met, after Serbian nationalist protesters stoned Western embassies in the Serbian capital in protest at the declaration from a region they consider a Serbian heartland.
"The EU has already decided to send a mission, a mission of stability, a mission of rule of law. It should contribute to the stability of the Balkans," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters.
Despite differences over recognition, the EU agreed on Saturday to send some 2,000 police, justice and civil administrators to supervise Kosovo and help build institutions.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said independence was "a great success for Europe" and not a defeat for Serbia, which had the prospect of joining the European Union.
"Don't take things tragically. It was very expected and things are going even better than expected," said Kouchner who was the first U.N. governor of Kosovo after 1999 and witnessed its first tense year under NATO and U.N. control.
Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller, asked about Belgrade's alliance with Moscow to resist Kosovo's independence, he said: "It is very, very important that Serbia knows it is not going to be part of Russia but part of Europe."
Kosovo's 2 million Albanians took it easy on Monday after a weekend of wild celebrations of the declaration of independence for their poor, landlocked territory.
At an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council on Sunday, Western powers resisted a bid by Serbia's ally Russia to block Kosovo's independence, and said NATO and the EU would take responsibility for the region's stability.
Thaci pledged that the new Kosovo would be a country of "all its citizens", a gesture to the 120,000 Serbs still living here.
But Serbia and Russia swept that aside.
"We'll strongly warn against any attempts at repressive measures should Serbs in Kosovo decide not to comply with this unilateral proclamation of independence," Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said in New York.
Serbs in Kosovo, led by the Serb-dominated north and with the full backing of Belgrade, reject the territory's secession, reinforcing an ethnic partition that NATO and the United Nations have failed to erase since the 1998-99 war.
Protests were called for midday on Monday (11 a.m. British time) in Serb towns in Kosovo. A U.N. car was torched overnight in the northern Serb town of Zubin Potok, witnesses said.
Hand grenades were lobbed at EU and U.N. buildings in the Serb stronghold of Mitrovica within hours of the declaration.
