Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced Saturday that he will ask NATO to deploy the Serbian army and police in Kosovo amid a spike in tension in recent hours at border crossings with Serbia.
Although the president has «no illusions» about the possibility of NATO accepting such a deployment at such a critical moment, Vucic has defended that Serbia has the right to make this request and criticized the room for maneuver that the Kosovar authorities are enjoying, who have declared their intention to request this month their application to join the European Union, as he has made known in a speech picked up by the channel B92.
If the request is confirmed, it would be the first time Belgrade has applied to deploy in Kosovo, under the provisions of a UN Security Council resolution that ended a 1998-1999 war in which NATO eventually stepped in to protect Kosovo, which has an Albanian majority.
Under the resolution cited by Vucic, Serbia can deploy up to 1,000 military, police and customs personnel to Orthodox Christian religious sites, Serb-majority areas and border crossings, if such a deployment is approved by the KFOR command.
