EU quibbles over accepting refugees as crisis worsens

Tens of thousands of hungry and exhausted Kosovo refugees were still stranded at the Macedonian border yesterday, while some …

Tens of thousands of hungry and exhausted Kosovo refugees were still stranded at the Macedonian border yesterday, while some west European countries appeared keen to stop an influx of refugees across their own frontiers.

As NATO put the number of ethnic Albanians driven from their homes in Kosovo over the past year at 831,000, the UN High Commission for Refugees said of 120,000 refugees in Macedonia, 85,000 were still camped in two cold and muddy border zones with Yugoslavia.

"Some 65,000 are in the area of Blace, 20,000 are in or trying to get to Jazince, less than 2,000 are in Kumanovo and the rest are scattered over Macedonia," said UNHCR spokeswoman, Ms Paula Ghedini. Another 50,000 were expected in the coming days.

Ms Ghedini said the agency was hearing from refugees that the queue of those waiting to cross from Serbia at Jazince stretched for 25 km.

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"We need to get these people out," Ms Ghedini told reporters. "It is terrible there. It is extremely muddy. The rain is not helping. We have already weakened people who went through a harrowing experience for four days. They waited at the border; they have not eaten."

The scale of the exodus from Kosovo has wrong-footed the West and thrown rescue efforts into confusion. Some 34,000 Kosovo Albanians were driven into Albania by Serb forces on Sunday and 10,000 had been sent to Macedonia, NATO said. It put the number expelled from Kosovo, since NATO air attacks against Yugoslavia began on March 24th, at more than 360,000.

EU countries have begun flying in food, tents, and medical supplies to Kosovo's neighbours in a bid to stem pressure from refugees to be flown out to the West. The EU and NATO agreed at the weekend to give sanctuary to more than 100,000 of the ethnic Albanians. However, Germany has insisted that this could only be a temporary measure.

Germany is particularly sensitive about refugees. It housed 350,000 Bosnians during that earlier Yugoslav war, more than the rest of the EU put together, creating tension with the sizeable Serb community in Germany and rightwing anti-immigrant groups.

Britain offered to provide temporary accommodation for some refugees but said its top priority was to enable them to return home and rebuild their lives in a secure environment.

In Rome, a government source noted that Italy was the only country with a massive refugee operation under way in Albania, and that was the main focus of Italian efforts at the moment.

EU interior ministers are due to meet tomorrow to co-ordinate a plan to provide sanctuary to the refugees.

A Macedonian government official, who declined to be named, told Reuters the outside world had failed to fulfil its promises on immediate aid, adding there was a danger of epidemics among the refugees, including cholera.

The UNHCR said its latest total for the number of refugees who have left Kosovo was composed of 226,000 people who had arrived in Albania, 120,000 in Macedonia, 35,700 in Montenegro, 7,900 in Bosnia and 6,000 in Turkey.

"By tomorrow morning it's going to be 430,000. It's growing by 30,000 a day," UNHCR spokesman, Mr Kris Janowski, said.