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Kosovo's President Hashim Thaci today gave up on his plans for a rapid transformation of the nation's defence force into an army, ceding to strong opposition from Western allies.
Updated : Mar 31, 2017, 12:04 AM IST
Kosovo's President Hashim Thaci today gave up on his plans for a rapid transformation of the nation's defence force into an army, ceding to strong opposition from Western allies.
Thaci had submitted to the parliament in early March a draft bill to establish a regular army for Kosovo by changing the current law on the Kosovo Security Force (KSF).
It would have been done without amending the constitution and would therefore circumvent a likely veto by Kosovo's ethnic Serb minority, who are hostile to the move. The majority of Kosovo's population is ethnic Albanian.
Since Kosovo's 1998-1999 war with Serbia, NATO-led multinational troops have been deployed in the territory which is currently not allowed its own army.
But now Thaci is endorsing the process of a constitutional amendment.
"We agree fully that this process should happen through constitutional changes," Thaci told
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)