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Kosovo parliament to vote to form new army

(AP-ANSA) - PRISTINA - Kosovo's parliament on Friday overwhelmingly approved the formation of an army, a move that has angered Serbia which says it would threaten peace in the war-scarred region. All 107 lawmakers present in the 120-seat parliament voted in favor of passing three draft laws to turn the existing 4,000-strong Kosovo Security Force into a regular, lightly armed army. Ethnic Serb lawmakers boycotted the vote. Speaker Kadri Veseli hailed the vote as the start of a new epoch for Kosovo. Serbia fears the move's main purpose is to ethnically cleanse Kosovo's Serbian-dominated north, something strongly denied by Pristina. In a sign of defiance, Serbs in the north displayed Serbian flags on streets and balconies while NATO-led peacekeepers deployed on a bridge in the ethnically divided northern town of Mitrovica. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic also is to visit Serbian troops on the border with Kosovo in an apparent saber-rattling move The U.S. Ambassador in Pristina, Philip S. Kosnett met on Thursday with the KSF commander "to underscore the U.S. Government's commitment to the KSF's evolution as a defensive force serving all of Kosovo's communities and reflective of the country's multi-ethnic character." "Let's remember that a country's security depends on the quality of its security relationships - and peaceful, mutually beneficial relations with its neighbors - as much as on the strength and professionalism of its armed forces," he tweeted Friday. The new army will preserve its former name - Kosovo Security Force - but now with a new mandate. In about a decade the army will have 5,000 troops and 3,000 reservists, essentially operating as a security force handling crisis response and civil protection operations. Kosovo's 1998-199 war ended with a 78-day NATO air campaign in June 1999 that stopped a Serbian crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists. Kosovo's 2008 independence isn't recognized by Serbia. Semini reported from Tirana, Albania; Dusan Stojanovic from Belgrade, Serbia contributed. (AP-ANSA).