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Appathurai said the training is expected to start soon, and diplomats added that the aim was to have an initial force of 1,200 ready by year's end. Diplomats said the 600 or so Spanish troops serving in Kosovo would not take part in the training. Although Appathurai stressed the planned multiethnic nature of the force, it was uncertain whether members of Kosovo's ethnic Serb minority would participate. Meanwhile, Russia signaled its continued annoyance over Kosovo by calling for the dismissal of the top U.N. official in the new nation over plans for the European Union to replace the current U.N....

BRUSSELS, May 28 (Reuters) - NATO troops should not be left to shoulder police tasks in Kosovo, the U.S.-led alliance said on Wednesday as signs grew that a European Union plan to take over police duties there faced months of delay. Kosovo's ethnic Albanian government asked the EU to take over policing from the United Nations when it declared independence from Serbia in February, but Serb ally Russia has so far blocked any formal handover.

A battalion of 600 British troops will be sent to Kosovo, Defence Secretary Des Browne has announced. It follows a Nato request for extra soldiers to maintain public order in the newly independent country. Britain is responsible for providing the body's standby reserve force for the first six months of this year. The soldiers, from 2nd Battalion, The Rifles, will be deployed to Kosovo from the end of May for one month to help Nato with peacekeeping activities. There are currently 150 British troops working in Kosovo. This latest deployment comes in response to a Nato request to deal with...

Penn State's student newspaper The Daily Collegian reported on Ann Coulter's hour-long speech there this month: "For possibly the first time in her career the conservative commentator, had nothing to say about a political issue. 'I have no opinion,' she told a student who asked her about Kosovo and Ukraine. That may be the first time those words have passed my lips." "During her hour-long speech to a crowd of more than a thousand in HUB Alumni Hall last week, though, Ms. Coulter spoke candidly about her opinions on a variety of controversial subjects ranging from the war in Iraq...

(Political Animal) THE KOSOVO QUANDARY....Liberal internationalist types tend to believe that non-defensive military action shouldn't be undertaken unless it's authorized by the UN. But Kosovo wasn't authorized by the UN, and most liberal internationalists seem to think it was a worthy effort anyway. Matt Yglesias, blogging about his new book over at TPMCafe, ponders this: It's a tough question for the liberal internationalist because generally speaking I would like to have my cake and eat it too here. Kosovo mostly accomplished good things, but the process — moving in without Security Council authorization — isn't something I can strictly speaking...

Serbia is commemorating today nine years since the beginning of NATO air strikes on then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The strikes lasted 11 weeks and according to different sources between 1,200 and 2,500 people were killed. Serbia PM Vojislav Kostunica shall attend today the commemoration service dedicated to the victims of NATO aggression on FRY in 1999, while the Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovic shall meet with the pilots that took part in combat actions and members of the families of the pilots that lost their lives in those actions. Minister Sutanovac shall also lay the wreaths on the monument dedicated...

UPI Outside View Commentator PITTSBURGH, March 20 (UPI) -- Fighting in northern Kosovo this week between Serbs and NATO-led troops shows that the independence engineered by the Bush administration for the breakaway Balkan province is not going according to plan. When U.S. officials encouraged the unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia by Kosovo's Albanians Feb. 17, we were told that an EU mission would replace the United Nations in Kosovo, and everyone would then build a multiethnic, democratic society with respect for rights of the Serbs, a minority in the province as a whole. That is not happening. The Serbs...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President George W. Bush authorized Wednesday supplying Kosovo with weapons, signaling the establishment of government-to-government relations after recognizing its independence, the White House said. In a memo to the State Department made public by the White House, Bush said: "I hereby find that the furnishing of defense articles and defense services to Kosovo will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace." A senior official said the authorization followed US recognition of Kosovo's independence and was part of the normal process of establishing relations with a new government. In a comment apparently meant to...

Moscow, March 18 (RIA Novosti) Russia has said that the recent violence in Tibet is linked with the recognition by some states of the independence of Serbia's breakaway province, Kosovo. In an interview published Tuesday in the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the recognition of Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence by many countries, including the US and the majority of the European Union (EU) states, had 'already reverberated in many regions.' He said that the Kosovo issue was linked to recent riots in Tibet and demands for greater autonomy by ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. 'There are...

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA -- Kosovska Mitrovica was in turmoil this morning after UNMIK and KFOR stormed a local court to arrest Serbs. Beta news agency says that several hundred soldiers at 05:30 CET surrounded the court, where Serb judicial workers, demanding to return to their jobs, were protesting since Friday. They first handcuffed the men, and then tied the women's hands with ropes. The workers were not resisting the arrest. When the troops moved outside to take them away, a large group of citizens blocked the road. The citizens, local Serbs in the divided town, then started throwing stones at UNMIK....

NATO's big blunder Action in Kosovo one of the great outrages of our timeBy PETER WORTHINGTON/b> Last Thursday, at the Royal Canadian Military Institute in Toronto, a gathering sponsored by Lord Byron Society discussed Kosovo declaring independence from Serbia. This is an esoteric topic of limited concern to those not familiar with Balkan politics. It is one of the great outrages of our times, and certainly the most scandalous and unnecessary adventure of the presidency of Bill Clinton, who unleashed his incompetent Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, to declare war on Serbia and persuaded NATO to join in. Albright and...

United Nations police in Kosovo have been forced to withdraw from Serbian areas in the divided city of Mitrovica after clashes with Serb demonstrators. At least 22 UN police and eight Nato troops were reported injured after a raid to retake a court seized by Serbs. Troops used tear gas as they faced gunfire, stones and petrol bombs. It is the worst violence since Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence last month. Serbia and Serbs in Kosovo refuse to recognise its independence. It also coincides with the fourth anniversary of a two-day episode of inter-ethnic violence in Mitrovica that left 31...

(CNN) -- The United Nations said Monday it is evacuating international police from the northern sector of the ethnically divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica after U.N. police and NATO soldiers were wounded in clashes with Serbs.

March 14, 2008 at 7:43 AM KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Kosovo, March 14 (UPI) -- A courthouse in northern Kosovo under guard by U.N. troops was stormed and occupied Friday by Serbian protesters who used to work there, Serbian media said. Serbia's state-run Tanjug news agency said several armed U.N. guards and about 30 Kosovo Police Service guards didn't engage the mob and offered no resistance. The Serbs broke through a cordon into the Municipal and District Court in Kosovska Mitrovica and went to the roof, where they replaced the U.N. flag with the Serbian flag, the report said. Serbs in the...

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA (AFP) - UN police were forced to withdraw Monday from the Serb-populated part of this flashpoint Kosovo town after coming under attack as they stormed a court occupied by Serbs opposed to independence. Police said more than 100 people were injured as the troops met gunfire and suspected grenade blasts in the worst violence to have flared in Kosovo since its independence declaration a month ago on February 17. The clashes erupted after UN police and NATO-led KFOR (Kosovo Force) troops surrounded the courthouse in Kosovska Mitrovica for a pre-dawn raid to evict the Serb protestors. Kosovo police...

It is hardly a conservative policy to support the establishment of an Islamist state on the European continent, turn a blind eye to the well-documented persecution of an ancient Christian community, engage in a Woodrow Wilson-style passion for nation building and follow in the footsteps of Bill Clinton. Yet that is what the United States has done by recognizing the independence of Kosovo. Kosovo is the ancient heartland of the Serbian people going back to the dawn of their history. It certainly had a Muslim ethnic Albanian majority before Clinton and his Secretary of State Madeline Albright bombed Belgrade back...

WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - The newly independent state of Kosovo will need an estimated $2 billion dollars in foreign aid over the next few years, about half of which should be provided by Europe, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday. The rest of the money could come from the United States and such institutions as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried said. He was testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Helping the fledgling state, which declared independence from Serbia on Feb. 17 with strong backing from Washington, will require top-level...

UNITED NATIONS - Kosovo's declaration of independence has led to the "de-facto partitioning" of the Serb-dominated north from the rest of the territory - just as Russia repeatedly warned would happen, Russia's U.N. ambassador said Tuesday. While ethnic Albanians account for nearly 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people, Serbs dominate a number of enclaves and a large part of northern Kosovo. They have refused to recognize any separation from Serbia, with daily protests taking place in the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica. Russian envoy Vitaly Churkin said Moscow has been saying "quite openly" inside and outside the U.N. Security...

Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia has called upon the international community to recognize its independence. In the opinion of the parliament the self-proclaimed republic of South Ossetia, "the Kosovo precedent presents a convincing argument" for recognition of its own independence. Later this week, Abkhazia, another pro-Russian territory attempting to break ties with Tbilisi, is expected to follow suit. RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service spoke with Eduard Kokoity, the de facto president of South Ossetia, to explain the reasoning behind the parliament's measure. "Considering the precedent created by the arguments that served as basis for the declaration of Kosovo's independence --...

BELGRADE, Serbia -- As editor-in-chief of Serbia's oldest and most prestigious daily newspaper, Politika, I am at a loss to explain the West's stubborn support for Kosovo independence to my readers. Only nine years ago, my country was bombed for 78 days by the most powerful military alliance the world has ever seen, and the last thing I want is to pour oil over the fire of anti-Western sentiment. But the truth is, I find myself grappling with the same bitterness and resentment as most of my countrymen. I was very much part of the democratic upheaveal that rid Serbia...