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Serbia talks up armed intervention as Kosovo approves new army | |
(about 3 hours later) | |
Serbia has talked up the possibility of an armed intervention in Kosovo after the parliament in Pristina overwhelmingly approved the formation of an army. | |
Belgrade called the move the “most direct threat to peace and stability in the region”, while Nato’s chief said it was “ill-timed” and urged dialogue. | |
The 120-seat Kosovan parliament voted with all present 107 politicians in favour of passing three draft laws to expand an existing 4,000 Kosovo Security Force and turn it into a regular lightly armed army. Ethnic-Serb community politicians boycotted the vote. | |
Serbia insists that the new army violates a UN resolution that ended Kosovo’s 1998-1999 bloody war of independence. It has warned bluntly that it may respond to the move with an armed intervention in the former province. Prime Minister Ana Brnabić said it was “one of the options on the table”. | |
Kosovo at 10: challenges overshadow independence celebrations | Kosovo at 10: challenges overshadow independence celebrations |
On Friday, Nikola Selakovic, an adviser to the Serbian president, said the country could send in Serbian armed forces or declare Kosovo an occupied territory. Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said Serbia will seek an urgent session of the United Nations security council over the issue. | |
In Serb-dominated northern Kosovo, Serb leader Goran Rakic said the new army was “unacceptable” and “showed clearly that Pristina does not want peace.” Rakic urged Serbs in Kosovo to show “restraint and not respond to provocations”. | |
In a sign of defiance, Serbs in the north displayed Serbian flags on streets and balconies while Nato-led peacekeepers deployed on a bridge in the ethnically divided northern town of Mitrovica. | |
Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić visited Serbian troops on the border with Kosovo on Friday in an apparent sabre-rattling move. Russia’s foreign ministry denounced the Kosovan move and said the army must be disbanded. | |
Any Serbian armed intervention in Kosovo would mean a direct confrontation with thousands of Nato-led peacekeepers, including US soldiers, stationed in Kosovo since 1999. | |
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a move not recognised by Belgrade or its ally Russia. Tensions have remained high between the two sides, and Nato and the European Union, which has led years-long talks to improve ties between the Balkan neighbours, expressed regret that Kosovo decided to go ahead with the army formation. | |
“I reiterate my call on both Pristina and Belgrade to remain calm and refrain from any statements or actions which may lead to escalation,” Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. | |
The new army will preserve its current name Kosovo Security Force but now with a new mandate. In about a decade the army expects to have 5,000 troops and 3,000 reservists, and a €98m annual budget. It will handle crisis response and civil protection operations essentially what the current paramilitary force, which is lightly armed, does. Its main tasks would be search and rescue, explosive ordnance disposal, firefighting and hazardous material disposal. | |
It’s not immediately clear how much more equipment or weapons the new army will have compared to the current force. | |
Serbia fears the move’s main purpose is to chase the Serb minority out Kosovo’s Serbian-dominated north, a claim strongly denied by Pristina. | |
The United States hailed Kosovo’s parliament vote to form a new army as a first step and reaffirmed “its support for the gradual transition ... to a force with a territorial defence mandate, as is Kosovo’s sovereign right.” | |
Kosovo’s 1998-1999 war ended with a 78-day Nato air campaign in June 1999 that stopped a bloody Serbian crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists. | |
Kosovo | Kosovo |
Serbia | Serbia |
Nato | Nato |
Europe | Europe |
news | news |
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