{"id":26000,"date":"2018-12-18T10:24:27","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T10:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26000"},"modified":"2018-12-18T10:24:27","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T10:24:27","slug":"kosovo-and-serbia-trade-accusations-over-kosovos-new-army","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26000","title":{"rendered":"Kosovo and Serbia trade accusations over Kosovo’s new army"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The presidents of Kosovo<\/a> and Serbia<\/a> have faced off in the UN<\/a> Security Council, days after Pristina’s parliament voted to transform their existing security force into a fully fledged army.<\/p>\n

All parties in Kosovo’s 120-seat parliament, excluding the Serbs, who boycotted, voted on Friday in favour of laws establishing a defence ministry, transforming the existing Kosovo Security Force (KSF) of 3,000 into an army and regulating the service.<\/p>\n

Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci said on Monday there was “nothing extraordinary” about the decision and that it was a “natural step” to establish an army to cement Kosovo’s status as a sovereign nation.<\/p>\n

“If Kosovo made a mistake, it’s only that we waited for five years to establish an army,” Thaci said.<\/p>\n

“Kosovo soldiers will be soldiers of peace and Kosovo’s army will be a contributor of stability to the region,” he added.<\/p>\n

Thaci said the degree of UN involvement should be reviewed, as the attention of the international body is needed elsewhere “to address real problems facing the world today”.<\/p>\n

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Kosovo Albanians block roads during Serbian president visit<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic however called on the UN to “curb” and “tame” Kosovo, and take on a bigger role in dialogue between the two groups in future. He also dismissed the “so-called sovereign right” of Kosovo to form their own military.<\/p>\n

Serbia continues to claim predominantly Albanian Kosovo as its own, despite the region having declared independence nearly 11 years ago.<\/p>\n

Vucic said he was “very much worried, very much concerned and even a bit afraid” about the implications of a Kosovan army for the region.<\/p>\n

Ethnic Albanians rebelled against Belgrade’s rule in 1998-99 in a war that eventually drew NATO to intervene against Serbia. A NATO<\/a>-led peacekeeping force has been in Kosovo ever since.<\/p>\n

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Kosovo President Hashim Thaci addressed the UN Security Council on Monday [Craig Ruttle\/AP]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Recognising KSF’s transition<\/h2>\n

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has expressed concern over the plans to strengthen the Kosovo Security Force, noting in a statement that any restriction to the security responsibilities of the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping mission would be inconsistent with the UN Security Council resolution that regulates KFOR.<\/p>\n

Russia <\/a>‘s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said expanding the army was a “blatant violation” of Security Council resolutions and called the creation of the army “illegal”.<\/p>\n

Russia is traditionally the protecting power of Serbia, from which the primarily Albanian-populated Kosovo broke off in 2008.<\/p>\n

The current and incoming European Union<\/a> members of the UN Security Council recognised the transition of the KSF as Kosovo’s sovereign right, in a joint statement. Britain<\/a>, France<\/a>, Germany<\/a>, Belgium<\/a> and Sweden<\/a> were among the countries calling on Kosovo to make the transformation of their armed forces “transparent and inclusive” and in close cooperation with NATO.<\/p>\n

They also called on both Pristina and Belgrade to lower tensions and resume dialogue, noting that a comprehensive normalisation agreement to set out the conditions of the future relationship between the two sides still needs to be reached.<\/p>\n

Recent tensions between Kosovo and Serbia have frustrated an EU-brokered normalisation process.<\/p>\n

Last month, Serbia blocked Kosovo from joining the Interpol law enforcement agency and Pristina responded by imposing trade tariffs on Serbian goods, drawing scorn from the European Union.<\/p>\n

Haradinaj said that the tariffs were in retaliation to Serbia’s “destructive policies” and promised further measures.<\/p>\n

NATO has also voiced concerns over Pristina’s plan for an army.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The presidents of Kosovo and Serbia have faced off in the UN Security Council, days after Pristina’s parliament voted to transform their existing security force into a fully fledged army. All parties in Kosovo’s 120-seat parliament, excluding the Serbs, who boycotted, voted on Friday in favour of laws establishing a defence ministry, transforming the existing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":26001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}