NATO ambassadors decided yesterday not to send additional troops to Kosovo for the time being, saying the situation in the province, and particularly in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica, was under control.
"I want to emphasise the situation in Kosovo is under control," NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson said in a statement issued in Brussels after a special meeting of ambassadors of the 19-state alliance.
"The situation in Mitrovica is a potential flashpoint," Lord Robertson said. "It flared up but we dealt with the unrest quickly and decisively. We are determined to keep KFOR at the right strength to allow it to carry out all its security tasks. Work is in hand urgently to review what more we need to do."
Referring to four countries that had proposed sending additional troops, including France, which offered 700 men, Lord Robertson said: "Additional forces have already been offered and force levels are under constant review."
Yesterday's meeting was held amid an apparent disagreement between Lord Robertson and the supreme allied commander for Europe, Gen Wesley Clark, over the need to reinforce the 37,000-strong KFOR. Gen Clark had the public backing of France and the US, but the ambassadors apparently were persuaded by the KFOR field commander, Gen Klaus Reinhardt, who briefed them via a satellite video link from Pristina insisting the situation was well in hand.
NATO had been concerned that the ethnic flare-ups in Mitrovica, along with skirmishes on Kosovo's borders with Macedonia and Albania, were a warning of wider trouble brewing in the separatist province of the former Yugoslavia.
Some observers see the town as a litmus test of the international community's resolve to stabilise the Kosovo situation enough to allow local self-government to get a foothold. They say it has, in effect, become a tug-of-war between Belgrade-controlled Serb extremists intent on thwarting international control of the province, and ethnic Albanian extremists linked to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
The KLA was supposed to have been disarmed, disbanded and transformed into a civilian body after last year's 78-day NATO bombing campaign. But many say the KLA has simply taken its fight for independence underground.