PRISTINA, Jan 22 (Reuters) - A grenade was thrown near a regional barracks of Kosovo's new army west of the capital Pristina on Thursday, but there were no casualties, police said. An investigation has been launched into the incident in the the town of Pec that occurred a day after Kosovo formed its own army in what it said was an effort to help solidify the majority Albanian state, which declared independence in February 2008. The grenade landed in a large yard and did not damage the barracks, said a police officer, who declined to be named. Serbia has said the new Kosovo Security Force (KSF) was a security threat, and Kosovo's minority Serbs see it as a step towards further division along ethnic lines. Serbia still considers Kosovo part of its territory. Earlier on Thursday, about 20-30 members of the forerunner to the new army, the Kosovo Protection Corps, staged a protest in Pristina because they were not enrolled in the KSF. Of more than 3,000 active members of the former civil protection force, only 1,300 have been accepted into the KSF, military officials say. The KSF will have 2,500 personnel and 800 reservists and will be fully operational in two to five years. It will be trained and overseen by NATO, which has 15,000 peacekeepers on the ground in Kosovo. Officials in Pristina have described the KSF as their army, but NATO has said the force would not undertake military tasks. A decade ago NATO bombed Serbian forces to halt ethnic cleansing in a two-year war against a separatist insurgency by ethnic Albanians. (Reporting by Shaban Buza, writing by Adam Tanner; Editing by Ralph Gowling)
