NATO Says Serbian Troops Won’t Return To Kosovo
August 18, 2007 -- Colonel Michael Knop, a spokesman for NATO-led peacekeepers in the Serbian province of Kosovo, said today that NATO will not allow Belgrade to send troops back to the breakaway province.
Belgrade said on August 17 that it wanted to return its soldiers and policemen to Kosovo in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which in 1999 ended the Kosovo conflict between Serbian forces and ethnic-Albanian separatists.
The resolution included an option that up to 1,000 Serbian soldiers and policemen could be sent back to the UN-administered province to guard cultural and religious sites.
(AFP)
Pro-independence graffiti in Prishtina (epa)
FINALLY STATUS? Sabine Freizer, director of the Crisis Group's Europe Program, told an RFE/RL briefing that deep divisions in the UN Security Council make it uncertain what form Kosovo's future status might take.
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