NATO Asks More Troops for Kosovo

NATO has asked for troop reinforcements for Kosovo, a spokesman said Tuesday but denied the demand was linked to the recent unrest in the volatile north.

"We can control the situation (in the north), we have enough troops. It is not because of our inability to control the situation. Our soldiers deployed on the ground will need some relief ... and we need (new troops) to back up the soldiers," as reserves, KFOR spokesman Hans Dieter Wichter told Agence France Presse.

NATO's KFOR mission currently has over 5,900 soldiers on the ground and Wichter said they asked for a reinforcement of a battalion, usually around 500 troops.

Unrest flared in Kosovo last week when the ethnic Albanian Kosovo government ordered police to seize control of two border crossings in northern Kosovo. Pristina said this was needed to enforce a ban on imports from Serbia which was not being respected by ethnic Serb members of Kosovo's border police. In the resulting clashes one ethnic Albanian police officer was killed.

NATO troops stepped in when a border post in Kosovo was set on fire and bulldozed, apparently by ethnic Serbs.

Angry Kosovo Serbs have been blocking the roads leading to the crossing for several days and vowed to remain at the barricades until a solution was found.

Kosovo banned imports from Serbia in response to the same move by Belgrade dating back to 2008, ever since the ethnic Albanian majority unilaterally proclaimed independence, which Serbs fiercely rejected.