Lieutenant General Roland Kather
Commander of KFOR
(AP, AFP, Reuters, UPI, KFOR) |
German Lieutenant General Roland Kather took up his post as KFOR commander on September 1st, 2006, succeeding Italian Lieutenant General Giuseppe Valotto. Kather is the 11th commander since the deployment of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo in June 1999.
Kather was born on May 17th, 1949, in Bennemuehlen, near the city of Hannover in Germany. In 1968, he joined the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, as a volunteer with the 6th Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion in Eutin. The assignments Kather took up after completing his officer training included platoon leader and member of the headquarter staff. He was a company commander at the 6th Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion until 1979.
From 1979 to 1981, Kather attended general staff training at the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College in Hamburg, after which he was appointed as a G4 staff officer with the 18th Armoured Brigade at Neumuenster.
From 1983 to 1984, Kather attended the Spanish Armed Forces General Staff Academy in Madrid.
Kather served as chief of staff of the Organisation Branch of the German Defense Ministry in the mid-1980s, as branch chief and staff officer to the Chief of Staff Armed Forces Staff from 1991-1995 and as deputy commander of the Bundeswehr Command and Operations Centre 1997-1999.
He also served as battalion commander of the 6th Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion in Eutin from 1989-1991, as chief of staff at the Military District Command III / 7th Armoured Division in Düsseldorf in 1995-1996 and as commander of the 42nd Armoured Brigade "Brandenburg" in Potsdam in 1999. After an assignment as chief of staff of German Army Forces Command in Koblenz in February 2001, Kather became commander of the 13th Mechanised Infantry Division in Leipzig in September 2003.
During his career, Kather also served with the Supreme Allied Headquarters of NATO Forces in Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium, in the late 1980s, and with NATO's IFOR mission in Trogir, Croatia, as chief of staff of the German contingent from April-August 1996. From December 1999 to June 2000, he was commander of KFOR's Multinational Brigade South and commander of the German contingent in Prizren.
Kather assumed his post as KFOR commander more than six months after the start of UN-led negotiations on Kosovo's final status. It was a year of shaping the future, the German general said at the change of command ceremony in Pristina, pledging that the about 17,000-strong NATO-led force would ensure stability in the volatile province.
"I don't see any obstacles in the way -- and if there are we'll push them away, of that you can be sure," he said.
Kather is married.
