UNHCR Warns Of
Financial Crisis In Kosovo
Effort
11:50 a.m. May 11, 1999 Eastern
By Elaine Monaghan
Skopje, Macedonia (Reuters) -
The United Nations refugee agency
said Tuesday it was running out of
cash to deal with the Kosovo crisis
and warned that tensions were
rising in badly overcrowded camps
in Macedonia.
Sadako Ogata, the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees, said
the cash shortage could seriously
set back efforts to help the
estimated 750,000 people from
Kosovo who have fled to nearby
countries such as Albania,
Macedonia and Montenegro.
She appealed to European
governments to shoulder more of
the burden.
''The response by many
donors...has been good, but we do
need more. We are providing only
the most basic needs of the
refugees and there is so far no end
to the conflict in sight,'' Ogata said
in a statement.
''I appeal in particular to countries
in Europe and the European
Commission...It is essential that
they bear a larger part of the
burden,'' the statement said.
The Geneva-based agency
UNHCR has appealed for a total of
$143 million to cover its costs in the
Kosovo emergency from January
until the end of June this year, but
officials said they had received only
about $71 million, and all of it had
already been spent or committed.
A UNHCR official in Macedonia
said the agency had met local
security forces to discuss rising
tensions after two protests broke
out at a camp in Macedonia
Monday.
''UNHCR is...looking at the
introduction of some international
liaison people who basically have
police experience in refugee camps
worldwide,'' Ron Redmond told
reporters in Skopje.
''Yesterday gave this an added
sense of urgency.''
This could lead to international
police from the United Nations or
Nordic countries including Finland
being stationed at each camp.
The UNHCR is under heavy
pressure to transport more refugees
out of Macedonia, which says it
faces economic or political calamity
if 239,000 already there are not
airlifted out faster.
A program to transport them to
neighboring Albania, which already
has 423,000 refugees, began
Monday but only about 150 people
took up the offer of refuge there --
partly because that country has no
evacuation program to countries
further afield.
UNHCR workers had been going
from tent to tent in Macedonian
camps looking for people willing to
go to Albania but most refugees
had refused to be uprooted a
second time.
More than 10,000 people are lined
up to travel to 20 countries from
Macedonia over the next week,
Redmond said.
But another influx of people from
the shattered Serbian province like
one last week, when 20,000
arrived in two days, could swamp
already overstretched camps in
Macedonia, he added.
In Albania, the UNHCR and the
Albanian government planned to
launch an information campaign
aimed at persuading refugees to
leave Kukes, 11 miles from the
border, for camps deeper inside
Albania.
Both the UNHCR and NATO have
expressed concern that the Kukes
camps are within shelling range of
the border and could become a
target for Serb artillery.
Many refugees say they prefer to
stay in Kukes, 70 miles north of the
Albanian capital Tirana, because
they are waiting for relatives to
come through or because they hope
to return home soon.
Meanwhile, the first groups of
Kosovo refugees arrived in
Australia and Ireland Tuesday.
Those sent to Australia were
received warmly in the country's
southern island state of Tasmania,
where dozens of people lined the
road from Hobart's main airport to
wave and cheer as 193 arrived
after a short flight from Sydney.
Bashkim Zeqiri, an 18-year-old
student from Pristina described
Tasmania as ''a paradise''
compared with the Macedonian
camps. ''You have a border with
water, we have a border with
enemies,'' he told reporters.
Some 138 Kosovo refugees landed
at rainswept Farranfore Airport in
south west Ireland before heading
in coaches to self-catering
accommodation in private hostels,
former convents and mobile homes
in former barracks.
Australia has offered temporary
safe haven to 4,000 Kosovo
refugees. Ireland is to take 1,000.
About 18,000 have so far been
taken in by EU states, including
10,000 by Germany. France has
accepted only a few thousand and
Britain a few hundred. Turkey, not
an EU member, has already taken
in about 15,000.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. |
