Austria Sending 150 Troops to Kosovo for Serbia Vote
Austria’s defense ministry said Saturday it is sending 150 more troops to Kosovo to help prevent unrest in the north of the breakaway province ahead of elections in neighboring Serbia on May 6.
The soldiers are being deployed following a request from the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping force, spokesman Robert Rauter said. German magazine Spiegel reported in its online edition that Berlin was also sending 550 more troops.
The European Union’s rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, said on Friday it had increased in presence in northern Kosovo in recent weeks with the NATO-led peacekeeping mission raising the number of patrols.
Minority Serbs in the northern part of majority ethnic-Albanian Kosovo intend to take part in Serbia’s general elections, but the government in Pristina considers this as unacceptable as had threatened to use “all legal force”.