NATO agrees to train Kosovo security forces

AP ^

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BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — NATO nations agreed Thursday to broaden their peacekeeping mission in Kosovo to include training for the newly independent nation's security forces.

NATO troops will help train Kosovo's troops even though a minority of member nations, led by Spain, have not recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia in February.

"With this decision, NATO will be able to assist Kosovo in building necessary, democratic security institutions," alliance Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said at the meeting of NATO defense ministers.

"This Kosovo security force will be lightly armed, democratic and will focus initially on crisis response and civil emergency response," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said.

He told The Associated Press that the new training tasks could be launched under the current mandate of the 15,700-strong peacekeeping force without being vetoed by Russia. Moscow strongly supports Serbia's efforts to cling to Kosovo, a region it considers its religious and historic heartland.

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 based on the paramilitary police deployed in many European nations.

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