WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites), eager to scale back U.S. peacekeeping in the Balkans, is expected to visit U.S.  troops in Kosovo at the end of a European trip in July, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

Officials said Bush, during a short visit on July 24, will address forces at  Camp Bondsteel, headquarters of the U.S. military presence in Serbia's Kosovo province. Some 6,000 U.S. troops are taking part in a 43,000-member multinational peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.

 Kosovo has been run as an international protectorate since 1999, when NATO (news - web sites)
 occupied it after bombing Yugoslavia to halt a crackdown against autonomy-seeking ethnic Albanians in the province.

 Bush vowed during last year's presidential campaign to review U.S. peacekeeping missions in the
 Balkans and elsewhere, saying America's armed forces were overextended. He said last week in
 Warsaw that he would not pull U.S. troops out of the region unilaterally but remained eager for their
 departure.

 ``We went into the Balkans together and we will come out together. Our goal must be to hasten the
 arrival of that day,'' Bush said in Warsaw.

 In addition to the Kosovo troops, another 3,000 U.S. troops are taking part in a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.

 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was the first Bush administration official to visit Camp Bondsteel, when he traveled there earlier in June.