• Thursday, December 10th, 2009
- NATO allied forces in Kosovo perform a crowd and riot control exercise to show interoperability of the allied troops of NATO Kosovo Forces (KFOR) and the local police force to protect property. (NATO photo by MC2 Stefanie Antosh. SHAPE PAO)
Flying home through bumpy weather from Pristina, Kosovo after a very full day visiting our Kosovo Force (KFOR) troops. Along with me are the Ambassadors of the United States, Germany, and Turkey to NATO. We spent a rainy, muddy day alongside 13,000 soldiers from over 30 countries — all deeply involved in the vital mission of maintaining a safe and secure environment in Kosovo.
The NATO effort in Kosovo has a long, successful history since 1999, and while the KFOR force will undergo changes, the mission will not change. I recommended earlier this year that we reduce our overall force down to 10,000 troops by the end of January, and that has been approved by the North Atlantic Council, the supreme political decision making body of NATO. I made that recommendation after careful study of the security situation, and progress by the international community in advancing positive civil-military cooperation. more…
• Tuesday, February 03rd, 2009
- KFOR Commander, Lieutenant General Giuseppe E. Gay, giving New Year reception speech
Kosovo may not be at the top of the news agenda at the moment but NATO’s UN mandated mission (KFOR) is still going strong and the men and women of the NATO force are still busy providing the security guarantee that has brought a degree of peace and stability to the region. This June will mark the 10th anniversary of NATO’s presence in Kosovo, the longest mission in our organizations history. Yet KFOR continues to launch new initiatives to help build relations between ethnic groups. The latest to emerge, launched by COM KFOR last week, is the “Development Zone” concept. The idea is to “move a little bit further in providing a stable and secure environment focusing in the areas where more than one ethnicity is living alongside the other”. According to Lt. Gen. Gay cooperation among communities can be improved. “We want to turn these areas of potential conflict into opportunities for mutual understanding and cooperation”. The Kosovo Development Zone concept is the idea through which “KFOR is ready to support any kind of project that will foster reconciliation and the cooperation among the inhabitants of Kosovo.”
• Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Last Friday SHAPE’s Chief of Staff, General Karl-Heinz Lather, spoke to about 20 international media representatives about NATO’s operations following the Bucharest Summit. The general talked about NATO enlargement, his views about the future of Kosovo, and the current situation for ISAF in Afghanistan.
The general spoke about the necessity of stamping out transnational terrorism so it can’t return to Afghanistan. He also reiterated our Ops staff analysis (posted on this blog February 4) that “seventy percent of the security incidents last year, 2007, occurred in only 10% of the 396 districts in Afghanistan. These districts are home to only 6% of the Afghan population.”
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