Kosovar President Hashim Thaci says there is "no turning back" from his plan to transform the Balkan country's lightly armed security force into a national army, brushing off strongly voiced concern from NATO and the United States.

The security force "will be transformed into a Kosovo army," Thaci told RFE/RL on March 8, seeming to dismiss warnings from the U.S. Embassy and the Western military alliance against making the change without amending the constitution.

The plan is vehemently opposed by Belgrade and by ethnic Serbs in the northern part of Kosovo, a former province of Serbia that broke away in a 1998-99 war and declared independence in 2008.

http://www.rferl.org/a/kosovo-moves-create-regular-army-over-serbian-objections-thaci-vucic/28356811.html