British to send troops to Kosovo
Yeah, you remember Kosovo? The country that declared its independence back in February? Well its still independent and now Britain is sending roughly 600 troop battalion to strengthen the NATO peacekeeping mission there.
“We are … well prepared to meet NATO’s request and I have agreed to deploy our Operational Reserve Force battalion until June 30, 2008,” Defense Secretary Des Browne said in a written statement to parliament.
“The deployment will demonstrate our commitment to the security of the region and will provide NATO with extra flexibility in maintaining peace and stability for all communities within Kosovo,” he said.
The soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, The Rifles, will spend about a month in Kosovo, from late May until the end of June, a Ministry of Defense spokesman said.
The battalion had been on standby since January to go to Kosovo, where they will supplement 16,000 NATO-led peacekeepers.
And these troops may very well be needed quite soon considering the large weapon’s cache discovered near Kosovo’s border with Macedonia.
The Kosovo Police Service (KPS) said on Monday (April 28th) that it arrested four people after stopping a car carrying weapons near the Kosovo-Macedonian border.
“We suspect that the weapons and ammunition were meant for the Macedonian market,” KPS spokesman Veton Elshani told the DPA.
The arsenal seized in a village near the town of Gnjilane on Sunday night reportedly included rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds, anti-aircraft machine guns and ammunition of different calibres. Police delivered the seized munitions to the NATO-led force operating in this part of Kosovo.
Police believe the intended recipients were ethnic Albanian extremists in Macedonia. The country endured a seven-month inter-ethnic conflict in 2001.
Remember where World War I was started? Yeah, they call this area a powder keg for a reason.
