Serbia’s Defense Minister Milos Vucevic has formally announced that he has asked NATO for permission to deploy its security forces in Kosovo, an unprecedented request since the end of the war in 1999, and the fulfillment of the warning declared this past weekend by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic following the upsurge in tension in the area.
«I have informed the President of the Republic of Serbia as Commander-in-Chief and the Prime Minister of the Government (…) shortly before 11.00 a.m. of the request for the entry of up to 1,000 members of the Army and Police into Kosovo,» Vucevic made known on Instagram.
The request, covered according to Serbia by UN resolution 1244, has been officially handed over to representatives of the NATO mission for Kosovo, KFOR, at the Merdare administrative crossing.
Vucic raised this option last weekend to protect, in his words, the Kosovo Serb majority in northern Kosovo, barricaded against the arrest of former police officer Dejan Pantic by Kosovo security forces, and amid an institutional vacuum in the country’s four Kosovo Serb municipalities following the boycott declared by Belgrade-friendly politicians.
In the last hours, the Serbian channel B92 has reported the arrest of a second former Kosovo Serb police officer, Sladjan Trajkovic, in the northern municipality of Mitrovica.
