NATO appeals, issues warning as end of Kosovo status talks nears Sep 21, 2007, 11:34 GMT
Pristina - The new commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo said Friday that he does not expect the status of Serbia's volatile breakaway province to be resolved in 2007 and hinted that NATO was preparing for possible violence. 'NATO has been engaged in prudent planning ... for post-December 10, but we don't want to speculate on the outcome,' French General Xavier Bout de Marnhac told a press conference. The ongoing, presumably last-ditch talks between Serbia and Kosovo, which is vastly dominated by Albanians, were tentatively scheduled to end on December 10. The talks are mediated by the big powers: the United States, European Union and Russia. Encouraged by support from the US, Albanian leaders said that they could declare independence after the deadline, but the EU is divided over the issue, while Russia backs Belgrade in its claim on Kosovo as its territory. Diplomats and officials of the KFOR peacekeeping mission worry that delaying the status decision could prod the increasingly impatient Albanians - who make up 90 per cent of the 2.1 million Kosovars - into a new round of violence. 'Everybody in Kosovo was speaking in February 2006 about independence by July. Today we are in 2007 and still with a big question mark ahead of us,' de Marnhac said. 'December 10 is a day everybody is expecting. It may be a critical day, and it may not be,' he added, refusing to reveal details of KFOR's preparations for the date and appealing for calm and peace. 'I don't expect people being interested in destruction. I need the strong support from the people to help us maintain peace,' de Marnhac said. 'KFOR is today more prepared than ever to respond to any threat. We want to maintain peace with determination,' he said. KFOR and the police of the UN administration were caught totally off guard by an explosion of orchestrated violence targeting the minority Serbs in March 2004. Seventeen people were killed, hundreds injured and hundreds of Serbian homes and shrines were torched in two days of rioting by Albanian mobs in nearly all Serbian enclaves. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/news/article_1358294.php/NATO_appeals_issues_warning_as_end_of_Kosovo_status_talks_nears [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
