Serbia says KFOR rejected its forces’ return to Kosovo

NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo have rejected a demand from Serbia that its security forces be allowed to return to the breakaway province amid ongoing tensions, Serbia’s president said on Sunday.
The KFOR peacekeepers, who deployed in Kosovo in 1999 after the NATO alliance’s bombing forced the Serbian army and police out of the territory, said in their response that there is no need for the return of the Serbian forces, Aleksandar Vucic said.
Serbia made its demand in mid-December when tensions in Kosovo soared over the arrest of an ethnic Serb former policemen that led to road blocks in the north of the country where ethnic Serbs mostly live.
Those tensions were later defused amid European Union and U.S. efforts to push forward an EU-mediated dialogue between the former Balkan war foes. Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence and the dispute remains a potential flashpoint.