Pristina - NATO began reinforcing its peacekeeping force in Kosovo on Wednesday, faced with the threat of unrest over Serbian plans to conduct elections in its Balkan neighbour four years after it broke away.
The first 250 German soldiers of a 700-strong reinforcement flew into Pristina airport, with the rest due to arrive by Monday before the vote on May 6.
Tensions have been rising over Serbian plans to conduct parliamentary and presidential elections among Serbs in its former southern province, where 90 percent of its 1.7 million people are Albanians.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008, but Serbia refuses to recognise the secession and is controlling a small slice of northern Kosovo where some 50 000 Serbs live.
Tensions are focused on the flashpoint town of Mitrovica, where Serbs and Albanians are divided by the river Ibar and several thousand NATO peacekeepers.
“COMKFOR (Commander of NATO's Kosovo force) assessed that we have a higher level of tensions and just to be prepared to maintain all of our tasks we requested these additional troops,” KFOR spokesman Marc Stummler told reporters.
The extra troops from Germany and Austria bring the total number of NATO soldiers on the ground to some 6 900.
Plans to further trim the NATO peace force last year were put on hold over a spate of violence in the mainly Serb north after Kosovo's Albanian-dominated government tried to extend its writ north of the Ibar in July but police units were repelled by armed Serbs.
Tit-for-tat arrests by Serbia and Kosovo and the killing of a Kosovo Albanian man this month in a bomb attack on his home in Mitrovica have raised fears of wider unrest.
Bowing to Western opposition, Serbia said it would not hold local elections among Kosovo's minority Serbs for municipal councillors, but some Kosovo Serbs have said they will organise voting themselves.
Kosovo's government has backtracked on earlier threats to stop the elections by force. It says the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) should organise voting for the presidential and parliamentary polls if necessary, but a solution has yet to be found.
“Such elections and any results are considered null and void ... and steps are being considered in cooperation with the international community not to allow these elections to aggravate the political situation in the northern part of the country,” Kosovo Deputy Foreign Minster Petrit Selimi told Reuters.
Serbia lost control of Kosovo in 1999 when NATO bombed to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians by Serb forces fighting a two-year counter-insurgency war.
Landlocked and impoverished, Kosovo has been recognised by 89 countries including the United States and 22 of the EU's 27 members. Serbia is under pressure from the European Union to loosen its grip on north Kosovo and improve relations with Pristina if Belgrade is to make progress on the long road to membership of the bloc. - Reuters