NATO backs new security force for Kosovo

PanARMENIAN.Net - NATO announced Thursday that it was ready to back the launch of a new Kosovo domestic security force, in a move likely to exacerbate tensions with Serbia and Russia.

  

The announcement, at a meeting of NATO defense ministers, fits with United Nations plans to restructure the nine-year UNMIK mission in Kosovo, as the territory prepares to adopt a new constitution this weekend.

  

Kosovo has been run by the UN since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign ended a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists, but from Sunday some of its responsibilities will be handed over to the European Union.

  

"NATO will supervise the standing down of the KPC (Kosovo Protection Corps) and the standing up of a civilian-controlled Kosovo security force," chief spokesman James Appathurai told reporters in Brussels.

  

He said it "will be a new, professional and multi-ethnic force which will be lightly armed and will possess no heavy weapons." Its first tasks, he said, would be crisis response, explosives disposal and civil protection.

  

NATO has been planning the move for several months, and an alliance diplomat has said that KFOR could move quickly to get the 2,500-strong force up and running.

  

"We're more or less ready to do that," he said, the AFP reports.

     

NATO leads the KFOR contingent of 16,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo, and the ministers debated exactly how it will function as UNMIK's duties evolve in the days ahead, with some tasks falling to the EU.

  

Above all, NATO does not want to be left doing UN police duties.