Tuesday, July 17, 2012


"U.S., Germany want Serbia to withdraw police from Kosovo"

BELGRADE -- The U.S. and Germany have requested that Serbia "withdraw its police officers from northern Kosovo and Metohija", says Belgrade-based Blic newspaper.
 
The tabloid explains that "officially Serbia does not have any security forces in the north but that it has engaged employees of the Interior Ministry (MUP) there".
Quoting unnamed sources, it further claims that it is "an open secret" that "between 300 and 400 MUP employees have been engaged there, while foreign services estimate that there are between 1,000 and 2,000 of Serbia's intelligence agents." 

Blic further says that Philip Gordon, the high US official who recently met with President Tomislav Nikolić, future PM Ivica Dačić and SNS leader Aleksandar Vučić in Belgrade, said that the his country "can and will help but that Belgrade should end support for illegal security and judicial forces in northern Kosovo". 

"Officially and formally Serbia does not have security forces in Kosovo and Metohija, but it does have MUP officers who work on issuance of documents. I think that the estimates that there are about 1,000 or 2,000 Serbian intelligence agents there are exaggerated', an unnamed "top official of the Serb authorities" was quoted as saying by Blic. 

As per the UN SC Resolution 1244, Serbia could send back a certain number of policemen to Kosovo in agreement with the international community. 

"Instead of that, the country has unofficially developed police and judicial structures, and courts as well. They have their principle offices at private homes without any official insignia. This is how the Kosovo administration of the 1990s used to operate in the time of Slobodan Milošević," the paper concludes.

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