Word: kosovo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...press conference held Monday at the Spanish naval base of Rota, Chacón denied any mistakes in the Kosovo incident and emphasized that the decision to withdraw was "intractable...
...That something was apparently communication. The decision to pull Spain's troops from Kosovo seemed to be made both suddenly and without previously discussing it with Spain's allies. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer expressed his disapproval on Friday. "Any significant change in the size or structure of KFOR should be the result of a decision within the Alliance," he said through a spokeswoman. U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood went further, saying, "We are deeply disappointed by this decision taken by Spain." Coming almost exactly five years after Zapatero's decision to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq...
...country and Zapatero's when Spain withdrew from Iraq in 2004, had been replaced by the more like-minded Obama. There was even talk that Spain would be a stop on the new American President's first European tour. And then Defense Minister Carme Chacón went to Kosovo...
...March 19, Chacón told Spanish soldiers at a base in Istok that they and the rest of Spain's more than 600 troops who have formed part of the NATO peacekeeping forces (KFOR) in Kosovo since 1999 had finished their work. Once Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia last year, Spain has been looking for a way out - in part because Spaniards don't recognize an independent Kosovo and also because they have their own separatist issues to deal with at home, in the form of Basque and Catalan nationalism. "The mission has been completed...
...answer, says Antonio Remiro, professor of international law at Madrid's Autonomous University has to do with what's going on in Kosovo now. "NATO is starting to help form the embryo of an independent Kosovan army," he says. "They're reinforcing civil institutions too. It's become more and more contradictory for Spain to be a part of that since they don't recognize Kosovo's independence...