Former US commander Wesley Clark has called on NATO to start procedures for Kosovo’s membership in the military alliance as soon as possible.
Clark was the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000, and led the NATO campaign against Serbia during the war in Kosovo in 1999.
“I think Kosovo should be a NATO member and I think this should happen as soon as possible,” Clark told Kosovo’s Koha TV in an interview on Wednesday.
He urged NATO to present Kosovo with the action plan for membership, and called on the four remaining NATO members – Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia, Spain – to recognize Kosovo.
The general refuted parallels drawn between the Russian aggression against Ukraine and NATO’s intervention to stop Serbia’s ethnic cleansing of Albanians from Kosovo in 1999.
NATO members have not been this unified since the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, he argued.
Calls for Kosovo government to push forward the country’s NATO membership have intensified since the Russian aggression against Ukraine due to fears that the conflict may spill in the Western Balkans through Russia’s regional allies Serbia and Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A working group led by the minister of foreign affairs was established this week to pave the way for the membership process.
“After Putin’s attack, the new era in Europe requires a new strategy for securing peace in our continent,” foreign minister Donika Gervalla-Schwarz tweeted after the group’s first meeting.
A NATO-led peace-support mission has been operating in Kosovo since the end of war in 1999. The country is not recognized by four NATO members due to their internal issues with ethnic minorities, which makes its initiative for accelerated membership a huge challenge.
