Starovic: Stoltenberg implicitly admitted that the Kosovo Police was a destabilizing factor in the north

State Secretary in the Ministry of Defense of Serbia, Nemanja Starovic, welcomed yesterday's statement by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, assessing that with that statement he had implicitly admitted that the militarized forces of the Kosovo Police in the previous period had been a factor that influenced destabilization.

Starovic says that Stoltenberg's statement after the meeting with "Ms. Vjosa Osmani from Kosovo", as she was officially presented at the NATO headquarters, indicated two important things.

"The first is that according to the valid agreements from 2013, the so-called Kosovo Security Forces cannot enter the north of Kosovo without the explicit consent of KFOR, and the second is that special militarized monoethnic police forces cannot be deployed in the north without timely and meaningful consultations with KFOR," Starovic told Kosovo Online.

As he assesses, this represents a positive step forward in relation to what has been the usual communication of the NATO Alliance until now, where it was constantly pointed out, he adds, that the KFOR mission represents only the force of the third response to security challenges and threats after the Kosovo Police and EULEX.

"In this way, Stoltenberg implicitly admits that precisely those special militarized forces of the Kosovo Police represented in the previous period a factor that influenced the destabilization of the situation on the ground and that there is no freedom of action for them in the north, certainly not in the way that the representatives of the administration in Pristina want to present," Starovic points out.

He says that this statement is welcome and represents a step in the right direction, as well as that he hopes it will be accompanied by further, concrete measures.

These measures, he adds, should enable KFOR to contribute to the complete withdrawal of all militarized monoethnic forces of the Kosovo Police from the north.

"Without something like that, we cannot talk about full and essential de-escalation on the ground, and without de-escalation, there will be no continuation of the political process of normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina, and that process cannot produce the full and expected results," Starovic concluded.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, after a meeting with Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani, stated that in accordance with Pristina's commitment from 2013, any deployment of the KSF in the north of Kosovo required the consent of KFOR and that timely and significant consultations were expected for any KSF or Kosovo Police actions that could affect the security environment.