By Oana Lungescu European correspondent in Brussels

The region has seen an upsurge of violence in recent months

The European Union has agreed the deployment of a 200-strong police mission to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The mission, approved at a meeting of EU foreign ministers, will begin in December and last for at least one year.

The name of the operation will be Proxima, to reflect the idea of proximity policing that has proved a success in multi-ethnic communities in western Europe.

The contingent will advise Macedonian police forces, as they work to include more officers from the country's large Albanian minority, and will help them fight organised crime.

Trouble hotspots

From December, they will be deployed at the interior ministry in the capital Skopje and in areas where ethnic Albanians live, like Tetovo and Kumanovo, which were flash-points when Macedonia was on the brink of civil war in 2001.

But it is unclear what role they can play if Macedonia faces another wave of bomb attacks and kidnapping of policemen, as it has this summer.

The EU police officers will wear their national uniforms, with blue arm-bands carrying the EU emblem of 12 stars.

The beginning of the deployment will dove-tail with the end of the EU's first military mission, code-named Concordia, deployed to Macedonia last April.

With only 450 lightly-armed troops, this was a modest but successful operation and a first test of the EU's fledgling military capabilities.

Boosted security role

The police mission will be the second of its kind, after the EU deployed 500 police officers in Bosnia last January.

Boosted by its second successful military operation in Congo this summer, the EU is also considering a much larger security role in Bosnia by taking over control of the peacekeeping force sometime next year.

But that could only be done with help from NATO planners and equipment - under an EU-Nato agreement already used in operation Concordia.

But, after the divisions over Iraq, the US remains ambivalent about the idea.