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BELGRADE, Dec. 16 (AP) — Serbia on Thursday formally demanded that its security forces return to the breakaway former Serbian province of Kosovo, despite warnings from the West that such an appeal was unlikely to be heeded and would only heighten tensions in the Balkans.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić told state RTS television that the government asked the commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping force that has been in Kosovo since 1999, when the Western coalition drove Serb troops out of the region, to allow up to 1,000 Serbian troops and police to return to the country. The northern part of the country inhabited by Serbs.
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“The request says a certain number of (Serbian troops), from 100 to 1,000, return to Kosovo,” Vucic said.
While “it is almost certain that this will not be granted,” the request will be on the record, he said.
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Serbian officials have claimed that the U.N. resolution that formally ended the war in Kosovo allowed Serbian troops to return to Kosovo. NATO bombed Serbia to stop the war, ended a bloody crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists and civilians, and ordered its troops to withdraw from Kosovo.
Serbian officials have claimed that NATO- and EU-led peacekeeping operations cannot protect Kosovo’s minority Serbs from harassment by the Kosovar Albanian majority, and that their security forces are up to the job.
The return of Serbian troops is unlikely to be approved, as it would effectively mean handing over the security of the Kosovo Serb-populated north to the Serbian army – a move that would significantly raise tensions in the Balkans.
German and U.S. officials have strongly rejected any notion of Serbian security forces returning to the region.
Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo have escalated again in the past week, after Serbs erected barricades on main roads in the northern part of the province to protest the arrest of a former Kosovo Serb policeman. The shots were fired from the barricade.
Serbia has boosted the readiness of its troops on the Kosovo border and has warned it will not stand idly by if Kosovar Serbs, who make up less than 10 percent of Kosovo’s population, are attacked.
Kosovo’s statehood status has been accepted by the United States and most Western countries. Serbia and its allies Russia and China have rejected it and blocked Kosovo from joining the United Nations and other international institutions.
There are fears that Russia may push Serbia for another military intervention in Kosovo in an attempt to divert at least some of the world’s attention from its invasion of Ukraine. Under Vučić’s populist leadership, Serbia has been steadily drifting away from its declared goal of joining the European Union and toward a closer political and military alliance with Moscow.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that “the Russian ambassador to Serbia, who is in close contact with the Serbian leadership, has received instructions from the Central (Moscow) to take concrete steps to support (to Serbia), including the normalization of Or propose ways to normalize the situation”.
Meanwhile, Kosovo’s prime minister formally submitted the country’s application for EU candidacy on Thursday, the first step on a seemingly long road to eventual membership.
Prime Minister Albin Kurti submitted the application to the Czech Minister of European Affairs Mikulasbek, who currently holds the EU presidency. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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