NATO's commander in Kosovo says the province's fragile security situation makes it imperative for politicians to resolve its future status quickly.
The warning on Friday by Lieutenant General Roland Kather, who commands the alliance's 16,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo, came as talks on Kosovo's status ended with Serbian and ethnic Albanian negotiators diametrically opposed to a UN plan that would give the province internationally supervised statehood.
"For security reasons ... we should come up with a decision about status as soon as possible," Kather said ahead of a planned protest against the UN plan.
PHOTO: AP
Some ethnic Albanians have complained it does not go far enough and insist on full independence for Kosovo.
"People want to have clarity, people want to know what's the way ahead and what will be the future," Kather added.
His comments highlighted concerns among ethnic Albanian leaders and Western officials that impatience is growing among Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority pressing for independence since the early 1990s. There are fears that tension could plunge the territory back into violence eight years after Serb forces and ethnic Albanian separatists fought a war here.
"This is my message to our political masters: Please do everything possible to come up with a decision very quickly, as quickly as possible," Kather said.
Over the last month, two demonstrators were killed when UN police fired rubber bullets at ethnic Albanian protesters angry at the plan. Three UN cars were bombed and a hand grenade blast damaged seven vehicles of an international organization.
"Violence will hinder the process and violence can even stop the process" of negotiations, Kather said. He pledged that peacekeepers would maintain a safe and secure environment, "but in case somebody will not understand the message, we'll have to act very hard, quickly and determined."
The continued stalemate at negotiations has raised questions about how to reconcile ethnic Albanians' quest for independence with Serbia's refusal to grant anything resembling statehood.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS