Refugees:
Hundreds of ethnic Albanian men cross the Kosovo-Albania border on Sunday, saying they've been released from a Serb-controlled prison in Smrekonica where they were beaten and underfed. Some of them look like teenagers and several are weeping in shock as they cross the border. Many of the men look emaciated. Hundreds more had crossed the border into Albania on Saturday, saying Yugoslav forces had freed them from prison where they were being held as suspected KLA members. Up to 5,000 more ethnic Albanians, many of them on the brink of starvation, flee to Macedonia from Kosovo on Saturday. It is the biggest influx in one day since May 4th.
Many refugees report men of fighting age being taken off by Serb forces. This weekend's arrivals at the main border checkpoint to Albania at Morina brought the first big group of men of fighting age, held on suspicion of being members of the KLA. None of the men who have crossed the border was wearing KLA uniforms. The UNHCR said of Saturday's group that there was no evidence to suggest they were KLA members.
NATO Campaign:
With NATO on the verge of its third month of bombing, Gen Wesley Clark asserts that it has broadened and deepened its target list. There was fresh embarrassment when its warplanes mistakenly attacked Kosare barracks, 10 miles from Albanian border, captured by the separatist KLA from Yugoslav forces over a month ago. KLA said seven fighters were killed and 25 wounded. This is the latest in a series of blunders that included hitting the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 7th.
This week NATO's 19 members are expected to approve plans for a ground force of 50,000, nearly double the number they once thought would suffice to implement a Kosovo peace settlement. Milosevic's troops are reported to be digging in along the Macedonian and Albanian borders, excavating trenches and laying minefields for the NATO invasion they have been ordered to repel.
Diplomacy:
Diplomats work through the weekend to craft a big-power peace proposal. Special EU envoy Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari says Western nations and Russia now see "eye to eye" on major issues. But he admits, after talks with Kofi Annan in Stockholm, that some key details still need to be clarified before he can go to Belgrade with peace proposals. Milosevic has so far given no indication that he is willing to accept the package that the Western powers are haggling over. Moscow and the Western capitals have yet to agree on the timing of events, including a NATO ceasefire, that could bring peace, and signal a role for NATO in any peacekeeping force.
US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott is back in Washington following talks in Moscow with Viktor Chernomyrdin. Talbott expected to return to Moscow for more talks with Chernomyrdin. Intensive effort expected this week to achieve a diplomatic solution..
And . . .
Some 200 Kosovo refugees at a camp in Albania are in hospital with food poisoning, having eaten imported Ukrainian salami 11 years past the expiry date, according to Kosovo Albanian Radio 21. The radio station's website reported that the refugees were from the Librazhde camp and quoted an Albanian doctor as saying poisoning from food distributed as humanitarian aid is a common problem. Many tinned items are said to have been withdrawn from camps because of corroded containers, non-existent product expiry dates, poor quality and for other health-related reasons.
Quote of the Weekend:
"To lie in a silent hospital ward in the blackness of a power cut, watching anti-aircraft fire arcing into the air and listening to the engines of NATO planes as they come in for the attack, is to begin to share the fears of this city's inhabitants." - John Simpson, the BBC's reporter in Belgrade, recovering from an operation for a leg injury.