Kosovo’s president asks for creation of a regular army
Kosovo’s president asked parliament March 7 to transform the country’s lightly armed security forces into a regular army, a move likely to anger Serbia.
Hashim Thaci submitted a draft law saying that “the transformation of Kosovo Security Force (KSF) into an army is a normal step of a sovereign and independent state.”
“Such a legal initiative … aims at protecting territorial sovereignty and integrity, preserving peace and defending the Republic of Kosovo’s interests and also contributes in building up and protecting regional and global peace and stability,” Thaci said in a statement.
The president regretted that the ethnic Serb minority has opposed the draft based on a stand “known to originate from Serbia.”
“Kosovo cannot let its fate to the pity of no one,” the president said.
Over the past few months, relations between Kosovo and Serbia have been tense following a series of frictions and incidents. Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and the move has been recognized by 114 countries but not by Belgrade.
The KSF, created in 2009, has about 4,000 regular and 2,500 reserve forces. The plan is to increase regular forces to 5,000 and reserves to 3,000.
Thaci also said international military forces deployed in Kosovo since 1999 will remain.
Last month, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, in separate visits to the country assured Kosovo that the military alliance will maintain troops in the Balkan country “for as long as it’s necessary.”
About 4,500 troops from 31 countries have been deployed in Kosovo since June 1999, after NATO’s 78-day air campaign to stop a bloody Serbian crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists.
“Kosovo is finally creating its army,” Thaci said. “Such a legal natural transformation is fully constitutional and necessary so that the KSF formally starts the process of NATO membership.” AP
Turkish, U.S., Russian military chiefs meet on Syria, Iraq
The top generals from Turkey, the United States and Russia met March 7 to discuss developments in Syria and Iraq as Syrian government forces made fresh gains fighting the Islamic State group.
The surprise meeting between Turkey’s Gen. Hulusi Akar, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian General Staff, took place in the Turkish coastal city of Antalya.
The talks, announced by Turkey, come amid rising tensions in northern Syria, where Turkish troops and allied Syrian fighters, U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces and Russian-allied Syrian troops are fighting their way toward the IS group’s de facto capital, Raqqa.
Turkey, a NATO ally, views the Kurdish group that dominates the Syria Democratic Forces as terrorists and has threatened to drive them from the northern city of Manbij, which the alliance captured from the militants last year with the aid of U.S. airstrikes. Turkey and Syria meanwhile support opposite sides in the Syrian civil war.
The U.S. has a few hundred special operations forces embedded with the SDF and wants the alliance to lead the march on Raqqa, where IS militants are believed to have planned international attacks.
The Pentagon said March 6 that U.S. forces have also taken up positions on the outskirts of Manbij to try to keep a lid on tensions.
On March 6, SDF fighters blocked the main road linking Raqqa with the eastern IS-held city of Deir el-Zour. The SDF is now stationed eight kilometers (five miles) north of Raqqa.
Elsewhere in northern Syria, government forces and their allies marched closer to a main water pumping station controlled by IS in Aleppo province, Syria’s military and an activist group said.
The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said troops are now just miles from the station, which supplies the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, with water.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also confirmed the advance near the town of Deir Hafer, the Jarrah air base and the Khafseh pumping station.
The advance is part of a dayslong government offensive against IS backed by Russian airstrikes. Taking the water station would ease Aleppo’s water shortage.
In the center of the country, Syrian troops captured the Jazal oil field from the extremists after days of fighting, state TV said, quoting an unnamed military official. The TV said military experts are dismantling explosives left behind while firefighters are working on extinguishing one of the wells that was torched by the extremists. AP
China rejects accusations keeping defense budget under wraps
China’s finance minister March 7 rejected accusations that the country is keeping its defense budget under wraps after the figure was omitted from an annual report released to the media.
The defense budget and budgets for foreign affairs and domestic security had been included in a draft submitted to members of China’s rubberstamp parliament, Xiao said at a press conference on the margins of the annual 10-day legislative session.
“Let me be very clear, there is no such thing as opacity in China’s military spending,” he said.
“We made some new changes in the way we compiled the files,” he said, without giving any details on why the figures had not been publicly released.
A finance ministry official March 5 told The Associated Press that the budget was rising 7 percent to 1.044 trillion yuan ($151 billion) this year, pushing it to its highest level ever, even while the rate of economic growth slows to its lowest this century.
The U.S. and others have routinely asked China to be more forthcoming about the goals of its ambitious military modernization program, under which the budget has grown by double-digit percentages for most of the past two decades.
China now has the world’s second-largest defense budget, although it totals less than a quarter of what the U.S. spends. AP