NATO nations have agreed to help train Kosovo's security forces, which will be lightly armed and initially focus primarily on crisis response and civil emergency response, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said here on Thursday.
"NATO will supervise and support the stand-up and training of a civilian-controlled Kosovo security force (KSF). The KSF will be anew professional and multi-ethnic cause," Scheffer said at a press conference after a session of the two-day NATO defense ministers' meeting.
He said the NATO members reached a consensus on the issue and even Spain, which has refused to recognize Kosovo's self-claimed independence, did not stand in the way.
As NATO "is not in the recognition business," he said, Spain could decide by itself whether to take part in the training plan for the KSF.
NATO, with the new task of training the KSF, will be able to assist Kosovo in building necessary, democratic security institutions, he added.
Under the training plan, NATO will help disband the existing Kosovo Protection Corps made up mostly of former ethnic Albanian guerrillas who fought Serbia in the late 1990s. They will be replaced by a force of about 2,500, whose function could be like paramilitary police deployed in many European nations.
With political realities on the ground set to change as Kosovo's first constitution will enter into force on Sunday, the KSF will be important for peace and stability of the breakaway ethnic Albanian-dominated Serbian province, which unilaterally declared independence last February.
However, Scheffer stressed the presence and mandate in the NATO peacekeeping mission in Kosovo (KFOR) have not changed.
"KFOR will remain in Kosovo on the basis of UN Security Council resolution 1244, unless the Security Council decides otherwise," he said. "One thing is not changed ... is KFOR's central role in providing a secure and safe environment in Kosovo."
"KFOR will continue to be also through and beyond a transitional period we are now going through in Kosovo. That is the clear and strong commitment of the ministers around the table," he said. "We have to ensure we have the right forces, a right number of forces and necessary reserves in place."
By June 15, the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), which has ruled the territory since 1999, is supposed to transfer power to a European Union (EU) rule-of-law mission (EULEX).
But Russia's opposition in the UN Security Council has delayed for months the deployment of the 2,000-strong EU mission. NATO fears that its troops will have to be drawn into policing tasks for which the soldiers were not trained.
"KFOR is not a police force," Scheffer repeated the position of the 26-member military alliance.
As to future relations among KFOR, UNMIK and EULEX, Scheffer said he discussed the issue with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Thursday in Paris on the sidelines of a donors' conference on Afghanistan.
Ban made a recent proposal for a "reconfiguration" of UNMIK to allow EULEX to work under UN umbrella.
Scheffer said the proposal will be discussed by the UN Security Council next week and KFOR will follow closely what will be the "follow-up" moves.
The NATO defense ministers are meeting to discuss Kosovo, Afghanistan, and NATO's transformation. On Friday, they will also meet separately with their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts.
Source:Xinhua
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