Byzantine Blog

Overriding the UN Security Council, U.S./NATO Refuses to Allow Return of Serbian Forces to Kosovo

“Serbian forces will not be allowed to return,” said province’s NATO representative Michael Knopp in rejection of Belgrade request to redeploy a limited number of Serbian military and police members to protect the remaining Serbs and non-Albanians in the province.

Knopp added that NATO forces are “responsible for the security in the Kosovo and there is absolutely no intention to allow the return of the Serbian forces to the province,” according to the Associated Press, as quoted by Tanjug.

It was Kosovo Serbs who have requested that Belgrade should demand the return of up to 1,000 Serbian troops to be deployed in their enclaves after NATO general Roland Kather, who commands the KFOR troops in the southern Serbian province, announced new waves of violence against the helpless non-Albanian population remaining in the province.

The UN Security Council Resolution 1244, as well as the armistice agreement signed by NATO and Serbia in 1999, both provide for redeployment of Serbian forces in the province.

U.S. officials have also instantly rejected Serbian proposal to finally fulfill this provision of mutual agreements, saying that such requests are merely “heating the passions” ahead of negotiations on the status of Serbian province.

“The chances of something like that happening are zilch. The Resolution 1244 stipulates that the KFOR commander should decide about the eventual return of hundreds of Serbian troops to Kosovo. Earlier, two of such requests by Belgrade were rejected,” said a U.S. State Department official to the Tanjug news agency.

After Slobodan Milosevic was replaced at the helm of Serbia in October 2000, Serbian government has twice requested the return of its security forces back to the province, in line with the UN SC Resolution 1244 provisions, but NATO commanders have turned down Belgrade’s requests on both occasions, claiming the “conditions are not quite right yet” for such a development.

In February 2003, the last time such request was issued by the Serbian Government, it was Premier Zoran Djindjic, assassinated only a month later, who proposed to then-NATO commander admiral Gregory Johnson, to allow the return of a limited number of Serbian forces to Kosovo-Metohija province, in order to fill in the gaps created after a number of NATO troops were recalled from Serbian province to be deployed in Iraq.

US/NATO Does Intend to Create its Own Satellite State in Serbia

Just a day before NATO and US State Department openly placed themselves above the United Nations Security Council, canceling out its 8-year-old, never-honored provision for redeployment of regular Serbian forces in the southern province, their officials acted deeply offended by the Serbian charges that U.S./NATO is intent on severing part of Serbia in order to create a satellite state run by the U.S.-led military alliance.

Reuters called it ‘a slur’, quoting American Brigadier General Douglas Earhart who summoned a news conference to say that “NATO has no intention of forming a state in Kosovo since it is here in a peacekeeping mission.”

Serbian Premier’s media advisor Srdjan Djuric responded Saturday by inviting NATO to renounce its support for Ahtisaari plan which advocates amputation of the part of Serbia’s territory where, according to the same plan, NATO would reserve the ultimate power, unchecked and beyond any and every civil authority that would officially govern the new satellite state.

“It is not NATO spokesperson’s word that NATO is not set on creating its own military state in Kosovo-Metohija that is needed, but the rejection of the Ahtisaari plan this alliance supports openly and publicly,” said Djuric.

He added that “we have yet to hear that NATO will respect the inviolability of Serbia’s internationally recognized borders, as well as sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbian state.”

“As long as NATO continues to support Ahtisaari plan and particularly its Annex 11, it is clear that it is indeed trying to create the first NATO state,” concluded Djuric addressing the press.