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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (6907)	5/5/1999 6:12:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 17770

What is more incredible they decided to transport Kosovo refugees to US and Western countries..but only from Macedonia..thus creating bottleneck to Macedonia...Total LOL is claim that these people want to go back to Kosovo, even for propaganda purpose this is absurd...Who are they kidding..This war is lost, Serbs won and we would just have to expand US population by 600,000 people..that is f course if Macedonia does not go up in flames, than all bets are off (how many US troops would be killed) Macedonia Slams Door On Kosovo Refugees 03:20 p.m May 05, 1999 Eastern By Peter Bale BLACE, Macedonia (Reuters) - Macedonia slammed the door on Kosovo refugees Wednesday, denying access to as many as 1,500 ethnic Albanians, the U.N. refugee agency said. ''The border was closed about 5 p.m. (local time/11 a.m. EDT). We were given no notice of it and we think many people were either not allowed in or pushed back into no-man's land,'' UNHCR spokeswoman Paula Ghedini told Reuters. ''We are extremely concerned about the situation.'' Henning Hensch, an official with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said special police were pushing refugees back to the Serbian side. The official reason given was that Macedonia could no longer cope with a flood of more than 200,000 refugees fleeing violence in the southern Serb province and that nine refugee camps across the country were full, he said. Macedonia, which has closed its borders on other occasions, loudly has taken other countries to task for criticizing its handling of the refugee crisis when it says they themselves should be doing more to help. Macedonia says the refugee burden is threatening to torpedo both its economy and its own delicate ethnic mix. Macedonian state television reported that the authorities had decided to accept only as many refugees as left the country. UNHCR says the pace of airlifts to third countries is still lagging its 2,000-a-day target and less than 30,000 have been flown out since NATO began air strikes on March 24. NATO and UNHCR have said in recent days that Albania was willing to accept as many as 60,000 refugees from Macedonia into new camps it is prepared to build. ''They will reopen the border at some point, but I think they (the refugees) will get a one-way ticket to Albania,'' said one UNHCR official at Blace who declined to be named. He said he believed people may have been pushed back as much as two miles and that they were being accepted back by the Serbian authorities. Reuters reporters at the scene said the checkpoint area was clear and it was difficult to see how many people were involved as they were way in the distance and access to them was not possible. Ghedini said UNHCR staff were working in no-man's land to give food and water to the refugees. She said some 3,000 entered Blace Wednesday and UNHCR had been surprised at the relatively small numbers. Earlier this week, there were two or three trains a day disgorging several thousand at a time. UNHCR was concerned that the government could again try to take refugees out of the country under cover of darkness, she said. Macedonia was criticized for moving tens of thousands of refugees to Albania last month, driving them at night in buses across the border without telling them where they were going. Reporters saw four empty buses waiting at Blace and another four or five full of refugees, waiting to take them to camps that already are sheltering nearly 100,000 people. Aid workers said 71 buses arrived Tuesday night at the new Cegrane camp in western Macedonia, which has mushroomed to the size of a town in less than a week. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees special envoy Dennis McNamara said earlier Macedonia had agreed to expand three of its camps, including Cegrane. There were more than 27,000 refugees at Cegrane Wednesday morning and McNamara said Macedonia had agreed to expand it to hold 50,000. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.