Italy leading the NATO mission in Kosovo. He will have to manage the cut of the US military

PRISTINA (from our correspondent)

Ask the Sun

In the NATO Headquarters of Camp Film City in Pristina the Tricolore is the guest of excellence at this time. General Roberto Vergori assumes command of the NATO KFOR mission. The new commander of the multinational force of the Atlantic Alliance receives the baton from Turkish general Özkan Ulutaş.

The ceremony takes place in a hangar in the heart of the base. The deployed soldiers belonging to different nations (Germans, Greeks, Turks, Romanians, Americans) give a good idea of ​​what KFOR is, that is, a mission that unites several countries in an attempt to stabilize a part of the Balkans which has seen a clash between Serbs and Kosovars in the not so distant past. After some recent protests linked to the presidential elections in Serbia, now, we are told, the situation has returned to normal.

An Italian officer leading the mission in Kosovo confirms Italy's leading role in the security of the Western Balkans. One of the Meloni government's foreign policy priorities is to bring the countries that are part of the Western Balkans into the European Union. Kosovo applied for membership in December 2022. Kosovo's future integration into the European Union, like that of Serbia, remains closely linked to the implementation of the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia facilitated by Brussels, which should lead to a comprehensive and legally binding agreement on the normalization of their relations.

The NATO peacekeeping mission KFOR, authorized by the UN, established in 1999 after the wars in the former Yugoslavia (United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244), has around 4,600 soldiers, of which around 500 are Americans. The American one, the second largest force after the Italian one, which has a leading role both in terms of numerical weight (900 soldiers, 137 land vehicles and 1 air vehicle) and command responsibility.