Kosovo's President Ibrahim Rugova escaped unhurt on Tuesday when a dustbin exploded just as his car drove past in the province's capital Pristina.

The explosion, whose cause was not immediately clear, comes at a politically tense time, one day after former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj pleaded not guilty to war crimes at The Hague and with talks looming on Kosovo's international status.

Police said the blast at 8:20 am damaged Rugova's black Mercedes as the moderate leader headed to see visiting European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who has a key role in talks over possible Kosovan independence from Serbia.

Police sealed off the road and members of the NATO-led peace force, KFOR, were on the scene.

The Serbian province, governed by the United Nations since a 1998-99 guerrilla war, has been on edge since Haradinaj resigned as premier last week to face the Hague charges.

The former guerrilla leader, a hero to many Kosovo Albanians, is charged with murder, rape and deporting civilians as a guerrilla leader in the war against Serb forces.

Rugova, 60, led a campaign of passive resistance to Serbian domination of Kosovo in the 1990s but formed an unlikely coalition with Haradinaj after Kosovo's second postwar general election in October.

The alliance was unpopular with many ethnic Albanians in the ex-guerrilla camp, who despise the mild-mannered intellectual Rugova for never fully endorsing the anti-Serbian insurgency.

Ninety percent of Kosovo's people are ethnic Albanians who want full independence, which Belgrade opposes.

NATO bombing in 1999 expelled Serb forces of former nationalist strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who were accused of atrocities against civilians in their fight against Kosovars.

PHOTO CAPTION

Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova (L) and Ramush Haradinaj. (AFP)