Kosovo launches own security force

Less than a year after declaring independence from Serbia, Kosovo Wednesday created its own security force, drawing a sharp protest from Belgrade and deepening unease among Kosovo's minority Serbs.The KosovoSecurity Force (KSF) is to replace the Kosovo Protection Corps, which was set up in September 1999 as an unarmed, disaster-relief organisation by a UN administration.
The KSF is to comprise 2,500 lightly armed permanent and 800 reserve troops and should reflect the ethnic composition of the population. A Kosovo police force was set up earlier and it operates along an international police presence. Ethnic Albanians make up a 90-per-cent majority of Kosovo's 2 million people, while ethnic Serbs make up the largest minority.
Serbs however fully dominate the northern one-quarter of Kosovo. Prime Minister Hashim Thaci promised that the fledgling army would "respect all Western and Nato standards." The Serb leadership in Kosovo and in Belgrade (backed by Serbian superpower allyRussia) however baulked at the move and continue to fight Pristina's drive for sovereignty. Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, who spent much of 2008 shuttling across the globe to suppress support for Kosovo, described KSF as an "illegal" creation.
The state secretary for Kosovo and Kosovo Serb leader, Oliver Ivanovic, warned that the KSF must remain under control of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, while a Serb local self-governing body asked Belgrade to call for a UN Security Council debate on the issue.
The ethnic Serbs, who reject Kosovo's independence, see the KFS as an instrument of intimidation aimed at them. Serbs on both sides of the Kosovo boundary insist that at the end of the day it is the UN that is in charge in the territory, in line with the 1999 resolution which introduced the international protectorate there.
Leading Western nations, including the United States and most European Union members, nevertheless recognised Kosovo and are backing its development into a fully sovereign nation. The United Nations took over the running of the province in 1999, after Nato intervened to end a 1998-99 war in Kosovo, Serbia's heartland province, triggered by ethnic repression there.
The UN mission in Kosovo has been downsized since the latter's declaration of independence on February 17, 2008 and has handed over almost all of its powers to a EU law-enforcement presence. Unlike the UN, Nato would remain on the ground with an undiminished presence, reflecting the fragile peace both within Kosovo and on its borders.