PRISTINA, Yugoslavia — The five-nation Eurocorps took command of Kosovo's international peacekeeping force Tuesday, pledging continuity and stressing it would operate completely within NATO structures.
Taking over key positions at KFOR headquarters, including the commander's post, is the biggest test for the Eurocorps — composed of staff from France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg — since its creation in 1992.
Some critics, particularly in Britain and the United States, have been wary of the Eurocorps, seeing it as an organization which could undermine and compete with NATO.
But Spanish Lieutenant-General Juan Ortuno, the Eurocorps chief taking over as KFOR commander from General Klaus Reinhardt of Germany, stressed that KFOR remained a NATO-led operation.
"It is also important to remember that KFOR is an integral part of NATO," Ortuno said at the handover ceremony in Pristina, noting that he was now under the command of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark.
Clark said the Eurocorps had done much over the past few years to move closer to NATO.
"Now there will be an affiliation, a subordination of this headquarters to NATO in this mission," he added.
The Eurocorps, normally based in the French city of Strasbourg, is providing around 350 out of the 1,200 staff at headquarters. Senior officers from non-Eurocorps countries such as the U.S. and Britain are also among the headquarters staff.
Clark stressed that only the headquarters staff was changing over, and the people of Kosovo should see little visible difference as a result of the handover.
KFOR has around 45,000 troops—39,000 in Kosovo and the others mostly in support roles in neighbouring countries.
"The same people are on the ground and General Ortuno's going to keep exactly the same grip on the situation that General Reinhardt had," Clark told reporters after the ceremony.
Many analysts see the decision to put the Eurocorps in charge for the next six-month rotation at KFOR headquarters as a major boost to European efforts to built its own military capability for crisis management.
Some commentators however are unconvinced about the Eurocorps, which has existed largely on paper since its inception, with some of its units committed only in theory.
"If nothing else, this will be Europe's first big military reality check," The Economist wrote earlier this year after the decision to assign KFOR command to the Eurocorps.
"The under-rehearsed, over-fragmented Eurocorps...will have to borrow skills and men from outside its own ranks and keep its fingers crossed that there is plenty of peace to keep, since it is not equipped to manage a serious fight."