Hungarian peacekeepers wounded in Kosovo

Hungarian experts expect further disturbances between the Serb minority and the Albanian-speaking majority in Kosovo.

NATO will send 700 more troops to northern Kosovo to help quell violent protests after clashes with ethnic Serbs there left 52 international soldiers wounded, including 27 Hungarians. Hungarian soldiers serve there as part of a 3,800-strong peacekeeping force.

On ATV, military analyst József Kis-Benedek excludes the possibility of an all-out war between Serbia and Kosovo, although Serbia has sent troops to the border region. Serbia, he explains, intends to join the European Union, and would certainly not want a full-frontal clash with the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo. He adds, however, that the ethnic conflict in Kosovo is too deep to be quelled any time soon and he expects violence to erupt from time to time in the future.

On Hirklikk, former (Socialist) deputy Foreign Minister András Bársony recalls that before Kosovo became independent, a war was fought there which claimed over 10 thousand lives. He fears a resurgence of armed conflict. He laments the fact that those generations which remembered an era of peaceful coexistence between the two ethnic communities are dead by now. He condemns the Serb side for the violence, but not without blaming the Kosovo government for failing to grant autonomy and self-government to Kosovo’s Serb-majority northern region.

Tags: Kosovo, peacekeepers