NATO Confirms 600 UK Troops Deployed to Kosovo

NATO reportedly confirmed that 600 British troops will be deployed in Kosovo after a battle between police and armed Serbs holed up in a monastery turned a quiet village in northern Kosovo into a war zone this week.

Britain's Ministry of Defense transferred command of an army battalion to NATO so it can provide support in Kosovo if needed, it said Friday.

"Due to the current situation in Kosovo, we have transferred command of the 1st Battalion of the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment – a reserve force for NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR) – to NATO so it can provide support if required," the MoD said in a statement.

Amid the news Monday, Serbia withdrew some troops stationed near the border with Kosovo, after having increased the numbers deployed there after a gun battle in northern Kosovo in which four people died, army commander General Milan Mojsilovic said.

Tensions between Belgrade and Pristina soared since Sept. 24, when Kosovo police near the northern Kosovo's village of Banjska fought about 30 armed Serbs who barricaded themselves in a Serbian Orthodox monastery. Three attackers and one police officer were killed.

The skirmishes prompted new international concern over the stability in the predominantly Albanian Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 after a guerrilla uprising and a 1999 NATO bombing campaign that drove out Serb security forces.

"Serbia had deployed 8,350 troops near (the border) ... with Kosovo, ... and reduced them to 4,500 at the moment," Mojsilovic said.

He said the army presence in the so-called Ground Safety Zone, a three-mile strip inside Serbia along the Kosovo border, had "reverted to normal."

Serbia has not "formally raised the level of readiness" of its 22,500-strong army, Mojsilovic said.

Kosovo on Saturday called on Serbia to reduce the number of troops along the border, while the United States on Friday said it was monitoring Serbian military deployment, describing it as destabilizing.

Pristina blamed Serbia for providing financial and logistical support to the group that fought Kosovo police, which Belgrade denied.

Mojsilovic said that Milan Radoicic, a Kosovo Serb politician who had admitted to taking the part in the skirmishes in Banjska, had not taken part in training with the army.

Some 50,000 Serbs who live in northern Kosovo do not recognize Pristina's institutions and see Belgrade as their capital. They have often clashed with Kosovo police and international peacekeepers, but Sunday's violence was the worst in years.

NATO, which still has 4,500 troops in Kosovo, said on Friday it had "authorized additional forces to address the current situation."

Information from Reuters was used to compile this report.

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