Kosovo Launches Its Own Army, Serbs Uneasy

The 120,000 Serbs living in Kosovo say they will not join the force.

Serbia's Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said the new force was a security threat, while Kosovo's minority Serbs see it as a step towards further division along ethnic lines in a state that declared independence in February.

"It is the fulfilment of people's wish through the centuries to have an army which will not be perceived as an army that commits only violence and insecurity," Hajredin Kuci, Kosovo's deputy prime minister, told Reuters.

The multi-ethnic force will have 2,500 personnel and 800 reservists and will be fully operational in two to five years. It will initially undertake missions such as crisis response, explosives disposal and civil protection.

Jeremic said Belgrade would use all the diplomatic tools at its disposal to protest against the creation of a force it said "is going to have the effect of the putting this paramilitary group into uniform".

The 120,000 Serbs living in Kosovo say they will not join the force.

Bojan Nikolcevic, a 33-year-old worker from the Serb enclave of Strpce, said the army was a continuation of the Kosovo Albanian guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army that fought against Serb forces in 1998-99 separatist war.

"Serbs should definitely not join this force," he said.

Strpce Serb Dejan Maric, 22, said Serbs would never see the Kosovo Security Force as their own army. "This is yet another way to keep communities further apart," he said.

At a training centre in Pristina on Wednesday, the commander of the new force, Gen. Lt. Sylejman Selimi, inspected soldiers in camouflage uniforms only minutes after the transition.

"We have a state and we are building up our state," he said. "Citizens from all communities can join."

The force will be trained and overseen by NATO, which has 15,000 peacekeepers on the ground. NATO has said the force is not an army and will not undertake military tasks.

A decade ago NATO bombed Serbian forces to halt ethnic cleansing in a two-year war against a separatist insurgency by ethnic Albanians.