Serbia’s Vucic seeks NATO approval to send forces to north Kosovo

Serbia will ask NATO peacekeepers to let it deploy Serbian military and police to volatile northern Kosovo, although it believes there is no chance of the request being approved, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned last month of the potential for “escalation and violence” after emergency talks between Kosovo and Serbia failed to resolve their long-running dispute over car licence plates used by the ethnic Serb minority in Kosovo.

The proposal by Belgrade to send its forces to the former Serbian province — and now independent Kosovo — could escalate already seething tensions in the Balkan states.

Vucic told a news conference on Saturday in Belgrade that he would make the request to deploy Serbian forces in a letter to the commander of NATO’s KFOR mission, the alliance’s peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

“We will request from the KFOR commander to ensure the deployment of army and police personnel of the Republic of Serbia to the territory of Kosovo and Metohija,” Vucic said, adding that he had “no illusions” that the request would be accepted.

The request to NATO would be the first time Belgrade has sought to deploy troops in Kosovo under the provisions of a UN Security Council resolution which ended a 1998-1999 war and in which NATO interceded against Serbia to protect Albanian-majority Kosovo.

The resolution said Serbia could deploy up to 1,000 military, police and customs officials to Orthodox Christian religious sites, areas with Serb majorities and border crossings, if such a deployment is approved by KFOR’s commander. At the time of the resolution, Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, was still recognised as part of Serbia.

Belgrade, supported by Russia and China, has refused to recognise Kosovo’s statehood.