German General Takes Over as Head of Kosovo Peacekeepers

Gen. Klaus Reinhardt of Germany took command of the 50,000-strong Kosovo peacekeeping force Friday.

British Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson handed over control of the multinational force, known as KFOR, to Reinhardt in a ceremony that underscored Germany’s increasing willingness to cast off postwar reticence and assume a higher military profile within the NATO alliance.

Reinhardt, 58, did not specifically refer to his own country’s Nazi past. But he stressed in his speech that the Kosovo Force led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had troops from 29 countries, many of them bitter enemies during World War II.

“Since then, they have put their differences behind them and learned to live and work together in helping to create a peaceful and prosperous new world,” he said in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. Among those present at the ceremony was U.S. Gen. Wesley K. Clark, NATO’s supreme commander in Europe.

“It is my hope, and it is my belief, that the same peace and prosperity can be brought to this part of the world too,” Reinhardt said.

The general’s comments were a clear appeal to break Kosovo’s cycle of violence, evident in countless attacks on Serbs by ethnic Albanians seeking revenge for an “ethnic cleansing” campaign carried out by Serbian forces.

NATO’s 11-week air war--sparked by the ethnic cleansing campaign against Albanians--ended with Serbian forces’ withdrawal in June from Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic.