Serbia on Thursday formally demanded that its security forces return to the breakaway former Serbian province of Kosovo, despite warnings from the West that such calls are unlikely to be accepted and only add to tensions in that part of the Balkans.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told state RTS television that the government asked the commander of NATO-led peacekeepers stationed in Kosovo since 1999, when the Western alliance pushed out Serb troops from the region, to allow the return of up to 1,000 Serbian army and police officers to the Serb-populated north of the country.
Serbian officials claim a United Nations resolution that formally ended the Kosovo war allows for Serbian troops to return to Kosovo. NATO bombed Serbia to stop the war, end its bloody crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists and civilians and order its troops out of Kosovo.
Serbian officials claim that the NATO and European Union-led peacekeeping missions are unable to protect the minority Serbs in Kosovo from harassment by majority Kosovo Albanians and that their security forces can do the job.
Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo flared anew during the past week after Serbs erected barricades on the main roads in the north of the province to protest the arrest of a former Kosovo Serb police officer. Shots were fired from the barricades.
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