( DJ ) 09/02 11:03AM DJ NATO Vows To Cut Kosovo Troops Despite Unrest BRUSSELS (AFP)--The North Atlantic Treaty Organization Wednesday said it would press on with plans to slash troops in Kosovo by January despite recent clashes between hardline ethnic Albanians and the European Union police mission. "Despite the unfortunate incidents, I don't think the overall security situation has changed," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters in Brussels. "We will stick to the decision already taken that we will reduce the number of KFOR troops from a level of 15,000 to a level of 10,000 at the beginning of next year," he said. "I think the overall security situation has improved and the conditions are fulfilled that we can take that step. We have a long-term goal of further reductions but each step will be taken after a thorough analysis." In Kosovo last week, demonstrators vented their fury over a police protocol the E.U. mission known as EULEX plans to sign with Serbia by attacking the mission's vehicles in the centre of the capital Pristina. Twenty ethnic Albanian activists were arrested after demonstrators stoned and slashed the tires of nearly 30 EULEX vehicles before overturning them. According to a NATO official, alliance troops didn't have to intervene. Albanian nationalists in the breakaway Serbian province are opposed to the police deal which they consider an infringement on their sovereignty. If security conditions can be assured, NATO plans to cut the number of troops in its KFOR peacekeeping mission to around 2,500 personnel over two years from January. NATO was tasked by U.N. Security Council resolution 1244 to provide security in Kosovo after it launched a 78-day air war in 1999 to stop a Serbian crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians. Pressure is mounting on the 28-member alliance to deploy more forces to places like Afghanistan while faced with an economic crisis biting into budgets, and nations have called for KFOR to be scaled back. But members remain deeply concerned about a possible rise in tensions in Kosovo, which broke away from Serbia in February last year. The following story was published on Thomson ONE: For information on Thomson ONE go to www.thomson.com/financial
