About 150 Kosovan refugees are to be sent to Kerry on Monday. The Irish Ambassador to the OSCE, Mr Brendan McMahon, said the selection would be ma de by the UNHCR. At the Stenkovac camp in Macedonia yesterday, he said: "We are leaving it entirely up to them and will go along with their priorities."
According to UNHCR principles guiding the evacuation of refugees, it must voluntary, it must respect family unity, and priority must be given to the most vulnerable and those with special needs.
The aged, unaccompanied minors, a family without a spouse, families of very young children, and those with a special medical condition are classified "priority 1".
Those with links to the third country are classified as "priority 2", while "priority 3" includes all the rest. Refugees must also be medically fit to travel.
Approximately 160 refugees have to date said they would like to go to Ireland. However, numbers rise when it becomes clear committed countries have activated their evacuation programmes. A complication can be the ethnic Albanian concept of family, which is very wide and frequently extends to include as many as 35 people and more.
Mr McMahon said an Irish advance party of seven was due in Macedonia last night, six of which would accompany the refugees to Kerry on Monday. They include a male and female interpreter, a male and female counsellor, as well as a doctor and nurse from the South Western Health Board. The seventh member of the advance party is a technical adviser from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Monday's flight, which is the first of Kosovan refugees to Ireland, will leave Skopje at 7.30 p.m. local time and fly direct to Farranfore. A second advance party will fly into Skopje from Dublin on Monday. It will accompany the second flight to Ireland on Thursday, which will also have a seating capacity of 150.
Mr McMahon, who is based in Vienna, visited the Brazda and Stenkovac camps as well as the border crossing at Blace yesterday. His first impressions were that the camps were "unsustainable. They are far too overcrowded."
He said it must be extremely difficult for many in the camps, who "would not be used to roughing it. They would have been living in apartment blocks with all the mod cons and services any Irish family would have. And suddenly they have nothing."
He observed that many were educated people from comfortable backgrounds used to the quality of life that goes with a developed, sophisticated society. It was a feature of the camps which set them apart from the many he had seen during his years of diplomatic service in Africa. That and the climate. European weather made it very difficult to live in such camps, he said.
The selection of refugees for Monday's flight to Ireland will take place this afternoon. The names of those chosen will be then be posted on notice-boards in the relevant camps.
Meanwhile, for the first time and despite the Macedonian government's insistence that borders are open, no refugees entered the country yesterday.
The EU humanitarian aid commissioner, Ms Emma Bonino, said in Montenegro yesterday she was impressed at the help Serbia's estranged sister republic had given to some 70,000 ethnic Albanians fleeing Kosovo. She said in the capital Podgorica the EU would give Montenegro €13 million to help it cope with the refugees.
Montenegro's pro-Western leaders have cut practically all ties with Serbia. Montenegro has its own Albanian minority which has so far lived in peace.
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