NATO force hit by vice girl claims

PEACEKEEPERS deployed in Kosovo have helped fuel an explosion in prostitution and human trafficking in the region, a human rights group claimed today.

An international coalition of soldiers serving in the former Yugoslav province are accused of sexually exploiting women and girls as young as 11, in a report by Amnesty.

In some instances troops from the NATO-led international military force in Kosovo (KFOR) have also allegedly been involved in trafficking the women themselves. None of those accused were British.

Amnesty International’s report found that after the deployment in 1999 of 40,000 KFOR troops and hundreds of UN civilian workers to Kosovo, a "small scale local market for prostitution was transformed into a large-scale industry".

The report found the number of places, like bars and clubs, where women were "exploited" increased tenfold from 18 in 1999 to over 200 in 2003.

One in five of those using trafficked women, meanwhile, were international personnel, despite making up just two per cent of the Kosovan population. But under an immunity agreement, KFOR soldiers and UN personnel cannot be prosecuted in Kosovo, and have also escaped any criminal charges in their own countries.