NATO members on Thursday agreed that the alliance should train Kosovo's future security force despite disagreeing on the region's status, three days before Kosovo's constitution is due to come into effect, according to dpa. "In the future, we, as (NATO Kosovo force) KFOR, will undertake the dismantling of the (interim) Kosovo Protection Force and the formation of the Kosovo Security Force. That means that we are making our contribution to stability in the region," German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung said as the meeting opened. The 26-member alliance had been deadlocked over the plan, laid out in 2007 by UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, for NATO to train the Kosovo Security Force (KSF), because several members, including Spain, Slovakia and Romania, had refused to recognize Kosovo's independence. But on Thursday morning, just before a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels, member states' ambassadors agreed that the training mission should go ahead as foreseen in Ahtisaari's plan but that Spain would not contribute troops to it. Moreover, they agreed to set up a trust fund to pay for the project, rather than funding it directly from NATO sources - thereby leaving the choice of whether or not to support the mission financially to individual states, diplomats said. Spain has already decided not to pay into the fund, but will continue to contribute soldiers to NATO's main mission in Kosovo, the 15,700-strong KFOR peacekeeping force, in which it currently has 636 soldiers, diplomats said. Slovakia and Romania have not yet decided whether or not to take part in the KSF training mission, officials said. The NATO defence ministerial meeting is now set to turn to the question of how KFOR will cooperate with the civilian missions of the United Nations and European Union in Kosovo. "It's very important that there should be no gap in the security policy. That means that (UN law-and-order mission) UNMIK should not pull out before (EU justice mission) EULEX is there," Jung said. Under the Ahtisaari plan, UNMIK should hand over to EULEX once Kosovo's constitution comes into force. However, Russia has blocked the approval of such a move in the UN Security Council. As a result, only some 300 of EULEX's planned 1,800 international staff have yet deployed, leading NATO officials to fear that its troops could be sucked into playing a policing role. On Thursday morning, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon proposed a way out of the deadlock by "reconfiguring" UNMIK and allowing EULEX to take over many of its functions "under the UN umbrella." "I wish we had not had this delay (in the handover of authority). It therefore makes sense at the moment to put it (EULEX) under the UN umbrella," Jung said. Ban's letter, and its implications for KFOR, are now likely to top the NATO defence ministers' agenda as they hold talks with counterparts from non-NATO KFOR members such as Armenia, Austria, Switzerland and Ukraine. Later on Thursday they are expected to focus on NATO's mission in Afghanistan. On Friday they are set to discuss how to modernize the alliance, and to meet with their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts.
