Serbia seeks return of its troops to Kosovo as tensions soar

BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia on Thursday formally demanded that its safety forces return to the breakaway former Serbian province of Kosovo, regardless of warnings from the West that such calls are unlikely to be accepted and solely add to tensions in that a part of the Balkans.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic instructed state RTS tv that the federal government requested the commander of NATO-led peacekeepers stationed in Kosovo since 1999, when the Western alliance pushed out Serb troops from the area, to permit the return of as much as 1,000 Serbian military and law enforcement officials to the Serb-populated north of the nation.

“The request says {that a} sure variety of (Serbian troops), from 100 to as much as 1,000, return to Kosovo,” Vucic stated.

He stated that even supposing it’s “virtually sure that this won’t be granted,” the request will probably be placed on the file.

Serbian officers declare a United Nations decision that formally ended the Kosovo conflict permits for Serbian troops to return to Kosovo. NATO bombed Serbia to cease the conflict, finish its bloody crackdown in opposition to ethnic Albanian separatists and civilians and order its troops out of Kosovo.

Serbian officers declare that the NATO and European Union-led peacekeeping missions are unable to guard the minority Serbs in Kosovo from harassment by majority Kosovo Albanians and that their safety forces can do the job.

The return of Serbian troops is unlikely to be granted as a result of it might de facto imply handing over safety of Kosovo’s ethnic Serb-populated northern areas to Serbian forces — a transfer that will dramatically improve tensions within the Balkans.

German and U.S. officers have vehemently rejected any thought of the return of Serbian safety forces to the area.

Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo flared anew in the course of the previous week after Serbs erected barricades on the primary roads within the north of the province to protest the arrest of a former Kosovo Serb police officer. Pictures had been fired from the barricades.

Serbia raised fight readiness of its troops on the border with Kosovo and warned it might not stand by if Serbs in Kosovo, who make up lower than 10% of Kosovo’s inhabitants, are attacked.

Kosovo’s statehood has been accepted by the U.S. and far of the West. Serbia and its allies Russia and China have rejected it and have blocked Kosovo from becoming a member of the U.N. and different worldwide establishments.

There are fears that Russia might push Serbia into one other army intervention in Kosovo to attempt to shift a minimum of among the world consideration from its invasion in Ukraine. Underneath Vucic’s populist management, Serbia has steadily been shifting away from its proclaimed EU membership objective and towards a detailed political and army alliance with Moscow.

Russian Overseas Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated Thursday that “the Russian Ambassador to Serbia, who’s in shut contact with the Serbian management, has acquired directions from the middle (Moscow) to take concrete steps of help (to Serbia) which embrace normalizing or proposing methods to normalize the state of affairs” in Kosovo.

In the meantime, Kosovo’s prime minister on Thursday formally tabled his nation’s utility to be granted candidacy standing for membership within the European Union, a primary step in what seems set to be a really lengthy path to eventual membership.

Prime Minister Albin Kurti submitted the applying to Czech Minister for European Affairs Mikulas Bek, whose nation at the moment holds the rotating EU presidency.