The presidents of Albania and Serbia have called on NATO’s Kosovo Force to take over for the national law enforcement agency in northern Kosovo on the heels of a daylong shootout between armed Serbs and Kosovar police that left four dead.
“Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic have both called on NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) to take over policing duties in the Serb-populated northern regions of Kosovo, after a deadly shootout between Kosovo police and armed Serbs.
‘KFOR must take control of the north of Kosovo’, Rama said at a press conference in Tirana on Thursday. ‘It is a proposal that I have made before’, he continued, adding that ‘even some voices have asked for it from the Serbian side’.
Kosovo has been occupied by around 5,000 NATO troops since 1999 when the Western bloc launched an air war against Serbia on behalf of ethnic Albanian terrorists, who claim sovereignty over the historic Serbian province. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a move that Serbia, along with Russia and around half of all UN states, do not recognize.
In Belgrade, Vucic issued a similar call on Tuesday after a meeting with envoys from the Quint group, which comprises the U.S., the UK, France, Germany, and Italy. ‘I reiterated Serbia's views on the latest events in Kosovo and Metohija and requested that KFOR take care of all security issues in the north of Kosovo instead of Kurti's police’, he wrote on Instagram, referring to Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti.
Both statements came after one of Kurti’s policemen and three Serbs were shot dead in the village of Banjska on Sunday. Vucic claims that a group of Serbs were setting up a barricade to fend off raids by Kurti’s forces when these forces provoked a shootout. Kurti claims that a group of thirty Serb gunmen fired first, killing the police officer before occupying a monastery for several hours and then retreating on foot.
Kurti called the gunmen ‘Serbian state-backed troops’, while Vucic denied any connection between the group and Belgrade. The Serbian leader stated that ‘Kurti is the only one to blame’ for the fatal altercation, adding that ‘his only desire is to drag us into a war with NATO’.
Despite the long-standing animosity between Serbia and NATO, Vucic views KFOR as less threatening to Kosovo’s Serb minority than Kurti’s forces. Had KFOR encountered the Serb barricades on Sunday instead of Kosovo police, he argued on Sunday, ‘there would have been much fewer victims’”. -RT
Although the population of Kosovo is mainly ethnic Albanian, Serbs form a majority in the northern parts of the country.
And while Kosovar Albanians have threatened to bring about the “unification” of Albania with Kosovo as part of their long-standing ambitions to establish “Greater Albania”, a measure that could include Serbia and even parts of Greece, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, Moscow has warned that Albania's bid to annex Kosovo violates the provisions of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 and has the potential to destabilize the Balkan region.