U.S. Urges Quick Balkan Solution as Serbs Reject Kosovo Army
- Serbian leader says no legal grounds to set up Kosovo Army
- State Department’s Mitchell says it won’t be threat to Serbia
Members of the Kosovo Security Force (KSF) march during a ceremony in Pristina on March 5.
Photographer: Armend Nimani/AFP/Getty Images
Serbia and other western Balkan states seeking to join the European Union should seize the opportunity to settle disputes, including over the forming of an army in Kosovo that Serbs staunchly oppose, a top U.S. diplomat said.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State A. Wess Mitchell, on a visit to Belgrade, praised an already existing force of 4,000 lightly armed soldiers in mostly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo and told Serbs they shouldn’t see it as a threat. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said there were no grounds to establish the army. He argued that Kosovo became a protectorate under a UN Security Council resolution in 1999 that ended a war over the territory.