Macedonian Media Monitor, April 20, 1999
Slavko Mangovski
By Bruce Stanley, Associated Press, 04/20/99 16:58
LONDON (AP) - The economic fallout from the conflict in the Balkans
extends well beyond burned-out villages in Kosovo and abandoned
factories in Belgrade.
Fears that the strife may spread already have taken a toll on Europe's
new single currency, the euro, which is limping along at a level well
below the expectations of its 11 member nations.
In addition, economists see investor confidence fading for projects in
countries bordering Yugoslavia, and European governments face bigger
bills to support and resettle a growing number of Kosovar refugees.
One of the best indicators of business confidence in Europe is the value
of the euro, which has steadily retreated since its introduction Jan. 4.
Some economists say the turmoil in the Balkans is at least partly to
blame.
The euro fell to a new low of $1.0590 during trading Monday but was up
at $1.0624 in late New York trading Tuesday. It rose as high as $1.1877
on its first day of trading.
Neil Parker, an economist at The Royal Bank of Scotland, said Tuesday
that an erosion in confidence due to the conflict has probably shaved 2
U.S. centsoff the euro's value. The bombing and burning is far too close
to home, he said.
''It's undermined confidence and stability in Europe as a whole.''
Nations paying the highest price are those closest to the conflict.
Hungary, Bulgaria and other countries that depend on waterways for much
of their trade have suffered disruptions since the Danube River was
closed to commerce, said Glenn Davis, chief economist at Credit Lyonnais
U.K.
The fighting has also discouraged Western investors.
''A lot of people have been very badly burned in Asia, Latin America and
Russia over the last few years, and you're going to look very stupid if
you put money into a war situation,'' Davis said.
In Germany, Europe's economic linchpin, the effects of the Kosovo crisis
have been mild so far.
But Germany has already accepted 10,000 refugees from Kosovo, and
payments for additional humanitarian efforts could eventually put
pressure on a federal budget already stretched by the costs of
integrating the former communist East Germany, said Thomas Mayer, a
Frankfurt-based economist for the investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Other countries likely to become destinations for displaced Kosovars -
Italy, Austria and Switzerland - could come under similar budgetary
pressures.
The United States and Britain, which have contributed the largest forces
to the military campaign against Yugoslavia, have seen their leadership
roles translate into a strengthening of their respective currencies.
Parker of the Royal Bank of Scotland said this trend is a function of
short-term euphoria more than financial logic.
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U.N. declares Macedonia camps at capacity
By Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press, 04/20/99 20:35
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - The U.N. refugee agency declared its camps in
Macedonia full beyond capacity Tuesday, leaving 2,000 to 3,000 new
arrivals from Kosovo stuck in a neutral border zone with no food, water
or blankets.
Already concerned about the virtual halt to refugee crossings into
Albania, aid workers also worried about the fate of a reported
15-mile-long convoy of refugees seen coming south from the Kosovo
capital, Pristina, on Saturday.
The convoy - estimated to include 9,000 to 16,000 people - disappeared,
according to other refugees' accounts to aid workers.
''Something must have happened to those people,'' said Kris Janowski,
UNHCR spokesman in Geneva.
Meanwhile, the exhausted refugees stuck at the border faced a second
night of driving wind and rain, and those fortunate enough to get out of
Kosovo faced new harassment in Macedonia, which has reluctantly taken in
the refugee throngs.
With its largest camp packed with 25,000 refugees, the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees was forced to put recent arrivals outside the
enclave's fence because local farmers would not sell or lease land to
expand the Brazda camp. That leaves those on its fringes vulnerable to
raids by a local population resentful of the influx of ethnic Albanians.
Macedonian civilians come nightly to the exposed tents, throwing stones,
shining flashlights into the tents and shouting while the exiles cower
inside, the Kosovo Albanians said.
''Is there no place where we are safe?'' asked one, Adem Muruglica.
Another 2,000 to 3,000 refugees reportedly staggered over a mountain
crossing, overwhelming a remote hamlet of 60 houses called Milana, the
U.N. refugee agency said.
Both groups of refugees said thousands more were behind them, driven out
by Serb purges of ethnic Albanian communities.
In New York, U.N. officials said as many as 350 ethnic Albanians heading
for Macedonia by train were turned back at the border Tuesday because
they didn't have passports. Another 150 people with documents were
allowed to get off the train at the main border crossing at Blace, said
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard.
The situation was different in Albania, where borders with Kosovo were
open Tuesday, but only a few refugees crossed to safety - apparently
blocked by Serb forces or fighting.
The U.N. agency estimated Tuesday that no more than 500,000 to 800,000
people remain in Kosovo, of a prewar total of 2 million, most of them
ethnic Albanians.
Unable to provide food and shelter for almost 150,000 Kosovo Albanian
refugees staying in the northern border town Kukes, the Albanian
government will evacuate almost half of them to other districts, a
minister said Tuesday.
Albania, one of the poorest countries in Europe, has taken a total of
over 350,000 refugees to date.
Macedonia gave aid workers permission to build one new camp near the
Lojane border crossing in Macedonia that could take up to 5,000 but
refused permission for two others.
When new arrivals backed up at the Lojane border crossing, 15 miles
north of Skopje, the Macedonian government agreed to allow in a few
hundred that the UNHCR said it could squeeze into an existing camp,
Redmond said.
But twilight found all the refugees still in no man's land - raising
fears of a recurrence of a border closing early in the refugee crisis,
when dozens died after days trapped in the border zone.
UNHCR chiefs were negotiating with Macedonian leaders to find new places
for the arrivals. To relieve some pressure on the camps, the U.N.
refugee agency was expanding refugee airlifts to Europe.
''We're scrambling now to take these people - we dearly want to get them
across,'' UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said.
In a television interview Tuesday, President Kiro Gligorov warned the
country was facing its greatest crisis since it seceeded from Yugoslavia
in 1991. He said Macedonia could end up hosting as many as 400,000
Kosovo Albanians.
''I believe dangers for Macedonia are growing,'' Gligorov said.
''Macedonia's interest is to preserve internal stability and external
security.''
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REFLECTIONS ON THE WAR IN THE BALKANS
As a person most of whose lifetime has passed in fighting for freedom of
thought and the press, for protection of minority rights, for equality
and
tolerance among all ethnic and religious groups, I affirm with deep
faith
that I am unable to be but a strongly convinced pacifist. I believe
that,
intrinsically, the defenders of human rights should be antiwar
activists. I
know that the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Milosevic in Kosovo should
be
immediately stopped, but I am opposed to NATO's bombings, which are
sowing
death, disaster, and devastation, subjecting to severe trials the
fragile
democracies in Southeastern Europe. The bombs are not saving the ethnic
Albanians. I think it is each staunch human-rights activist's foremost
duty
to protect the life and dignity of every human being. In this sense, I
am
afraid that if NATO's further step is to undertake ground operations in
Serbia, we will see new scores of lost lives and people with humiliated
self-respect - including Americans, French, Germans and all those who
may
be thrown into battle. The Serbs are seized by the grave determination
of
people who have nothing to lose - surrounded by the ruins in their
country
and faced with national catastrophe, they will surely be ruthless
towards
the Kosovars, as well as to any soldiers of the Alliance who might fall
into their hands. War cannot enforce a just cause, for its instruments
are
destructive - in both moral and material terms. War cannot make one
happy
or successful. It is only the war industry and some amoral individuals
that
profit from it, marauding over the misery of millions of people -
dictator
Milosevic in the first place, of course.
I call on you to unite our efforts for joint action aimed at immediately
halting the war and seeking a political solution of the conflict, as
well
as bringing to justice this criminal against humanity - Milosevic! Let
me
stop here with my personal viewpoint and emotions.
In my capacity of scholar and expert having knowledge of and experience
in
the history and political development of the Balkans, I would like to
make
the following assessment:
1. NATO's military intervention in the Balkans has led to the apparent
destabilization of its youngest democracies - Macedonia and Montenegro.
In
these countries not only objections against the respective governments
on
account of their pro-NATO positions are growing with each day, but
anti-American and anti-West sentiments are being provoked. At the same
time, xenophobic attitudes and hatred for the unwanted refugees are
uncontrollably escalating. The collapse of the economies needs no
commentary, it is evident to everyone.
2. In Bulgaria and Greece, whose democratic governments are deemed to be
relatively stable, the anti-American and anti-West sentiments have
become
widely spread among the population. In the atmosphere of fear of getting
involved in the war, and of facing economic destruction, it is very
difficult to defend no matter what just cause, to advocate the values of
the established Western democracies, to plead for tolerance and human
rights. Bulgaria's aspiration for joining the North Atlantic Pact has
been
motivated, above all, by the Bulgarian people's fears of war, by the
guarantees for peace they need, because Bulgaria has gone through more
than
one national disaster in consequence of wars. Today for a wide circle of
the Bulgarian public it has turned out to be a wrong choice, because
commitment to NATO means bomb attacks and destruction, ruined relations
with the neighbouring countries.
3. In Serbia, our colleagues and the people from nongovermental civil
organizations with whom we share the same views, the handful of
liberal-minded intellectuals have been driven into a corner and feel
helpless and deceived. All their efforts to cultivate tolerance, to
defend
minority rights and the idea of broad autonomy for Kosovo, to fight for
undermining Milosevic's regime, all become meaningless amidst the wail
of
sirens, the thunder of canons, the devastation and civilian casualties.
Their arguments have lost all their power. The same holds true of our
fellows in the Bosnian-Croatian Federation and the Republika Srpska, who
already felt dissatisfied and strained by the outcome and provisions of
the
Dayton accords.
4. The Balkan scholars and specialists have quite clearly grasped the
lack
of competent analyses and prognoses concerning the situation in the
Balkans
that would reckon with the specific all-Balkan or national
characteristics
and regularities, that could be used by the European and international
alliances and organizations. The unwillingness, or maybe the
presumption,
of the West-˜uropean and American analytical centres have minimized the
part of local experts studying Balkan problems, who know in detail the
history, folk psychology and culture of the Balkan peoples. Or the case
may
be that their knowledge is considered to be of secondary or small
importance in making political decisions. Only the regional specialists
could perhaps explain the deeply rooted passion of the Balkan nations
and
states for mutual disputes over borderlines and populations. The Balkan
irredentism was activated after the two Balkan wars and following World
War
I, naturally with the assistance and under the dictate of the
West-European
governments. Owing to the complexity of ethnic boundaries, all political
borders in the Balkans have been doomed to infringe some nation's
interests
and be unjust even in terms of some most conventional international
standards. With the decades past, however, the Balkans know that there
is
nothing more dangerous and ill-fated than redrawing the Balkan borders,
even the internal ones, like in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Scholars in the Balkans have long called the attention of Western
politicians by insisting that the Balkans should not be described in
general terms, because the differences between the Balkan states and
nations, including those between their minorities, are more substantial
than their similarities. Never have politicians in the West and their
analysts wished to realize the warning that each Balkan nation has a
different temperament, mentality, world outlook, culture, and,
especially
historical experience. Homo Balkanicus is a literary-philosophical
metaphor
and it is risky to build our contemporary geopolitical strategy upon it.
5. The humanitarian disaster has not surprised the Balkan politicians
and
analysts. It seems to have confounded only the Alliance and the
West-European societies. Under much calmer circumstances, without
bombings
and terrorist bands, ten years ago over 350 thousand ethnic Turks were
driven away or made to flee, pushed along by fear and panic, from
Bulgaria.
We were then witnesses of large masses of refugees, women, children, and
old people, who were living in camps on both sides of the border, who
were
dying or giving birth on the road. If there is one thing that the Balkan
peoples have known for generations and centuries, it is refugee's
sufferings and refugee outpourings in all directions.
In Kosovo the emerging situation is one of a triple press on the
ordinary
civilians - the Kosovars: the Serb atrocities in the ethnic cleansing,
NATO's intensive bombing, and the aggressive radicalism of the KLA
nationalists.
Missed have been scores of possible early preventive political moves,
which
could narrow the scope of today's sufferings, economic losses and
prospective geopolitical risks - beginning from timely support for the
democratization of Serbia to making dictator Milosevic step down.
The results we have now are anti-NATO and anti-American sentiments in
the
majority of the Balkan societies, destabilization of the democratic
governments, economic destruction. A term until recently forgotten and
used
only in the history textbooks, usually with a pejorative connotation,
the
Great Powers, has been revived in the Balkan vocabulary.
Obviously, the human-rights and civil movements in the Balkans and in
Europe should summon their energy to undertake joint action against
Milosevic and against the war. And I think the harmonization of their
efforts is already underway. We would like the Great Powers to abandon
their stereotypes and prejudices, as well as the ready-made anti-crisis
models and adopt a non-standard and adequate approach aimed at stopping
the
war and reconstructing the Balkans.
19 April 1999 Antonina Zhelyazkova
IMIR - Sofia, Bulgaria
===============================================================
FOCUS-Macedonia relents on camps but crisis worsens
02:22 p.m Apr 20, 1999 Eastern
By Mark Heinrich
SKOPJE, April 20 (Reuters) - Macedonia has reversed policy and agreed to
expand an overloaded network of camps for Kosovo Albanian refugees but
the humanitarian crisis sharpened with thousands of new expellees
flooding into isolated border villages without food to sustain them.
The United Nations fears that 800,000 people could be thrust from Kosovo
into neighbouring Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro in a wave of Serbian
ethnic cleansing in the next 10 days.
With existing camps close to bursting, posing sanitation and security
threats, senior U.N. relief officials from Geneva arrived in Skopje on
Monday to press the government to relent on its refusal to build new
camps or expand current facilities.
Macedonian officials fear the refugee tide could stoke conflict between
the impoverished Balkan country's pro-Serb Slav majority and the large
Albanian minority, which has taken 80,000 relatives into their homes
among the 150,000 who have flowed in over the past month.
``We received government approval for a new camp last night and
construction began immediately,'' said Ron Redmond, spokesman for the
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Macedonia.
``We are extremely relieved. It gives us a bit of light at the end of
the tunnel and we are scrambling now to work with that,'' he told
Reuters.
UNHCR head Sadako Ogata welcomed the decision but said many more camps
were needed both in Macedonia and Albania. She also asked countries
which have agreed to take in refugees who first fled to Macedonia to
speed up their efforts.
The UNHCR had paid Macedonia's urbanisation ministry to contract with
German and local firms to clear land for a seventh tent city at Cegrane,
near Tetovo in the heavily ethnic Albanian northwest of Macedonia.
Cegrane will be able to accept 3,000-5,000 refugees within three days
and it was hoped capacity could be expanded to 20,000 over the next
three weeks.
Redmond said Cegrane would swiftly fill with some 3,000 refugees who
flooded the mountain border village of Lojane but confined there in
primitive conditions by police claiming there was no more room in the
country for them.
Malina, another hamlet in remote highlands reachable only by a steep
dirt track 70 km (45 miles) north of Skopje, was overrun by 2,000 Kosovo
Albanian refugees early on Tuesday and a further 3,000 were expected to
swarm in by early Wednesday, said Lindsey Davis of the U.N.-affiliated
World Food Programme.
Only three days before, 3,000 refugees had reached Malina after a
20-hour trek through snowy mountains, quintupling the village population
at a stroke.
``We went up there today to check conditions and found the situation
critical with hardly any food whatever except for a few boxes of
biscuits, mineral water and bread,'' Davis told Reuters. ``We brought
emergency rations for 1,500 people but that will last only one night.''
He said the village was expecting a total of 10,000 refugees from
villages just across the border in the next few days.
There are now around 50,000 refugees in Macedonian camps. More than
30,000 have been airlifited or bused to third countries for lack of
space.
Redmond said NATO pilots had spotted a 25-km (15-mile)-long column of
vehicles just south of the Kosovo capital Pristina on or near the
highway to the Macedonian border at Blace. Up to 15,000 people would be
in a column that size.
``But we also know there are long lines of abandoned vehicles all around
Kosovo so we can't be sure if this one, sighted yesterday, was moving or
just abandoned.''
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========
Conflict Shakes Greek Tightrope Between NATO and Serbs
AP
20-APR-99
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- For NATO member Greece, the main showdown isn't
with Yugoslavia. It's within.
Public opinion in the country is almost totally unified against the air
attacks. Greeks worry about being snared in a wider Balkan war and find
kinship with Serbs as fellow Christian Orthodox, whose leaders often
promote age-old paranoia about losing ground to Muslims and bowing to
the West.
The Greek government has so far managed to balance between domestic
dissent and alliance obligations, but with the attacks showing no sign
of easing, that act may become harder to perform.
Escalating the air campaign could mean using Greek bases. Ground action
in Kosovo would likely bring convoys of soldiers and troops through the
northern port of Salonica en route to Macedonia -- a corridor that has
already been closed off once by anti-NATO protesters.
Greek officials say they will not contribute any forces to attack
Yugoslavia. But if public protests block even logistical support, the
question would ring louder: Is there a place in NATO for an unreliable
ally?
"If Greece, because of public opposition, can't handle its NATO
obligations in this case, there could be some wider fallout," said James
Ker-Lindsay, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in
London. "They could face some serious credibility issues with other NATO
partners."
Other Balkans nations desperate to join the alliance -- including
Romania and Bulgaria -- could emerge as NATO's new regional operational
points if Greece balks at full cooperation. Albania may find itself
contentedly ensconced as an undeclared NATO protectorate.
Protest rallies are held nearly every day now in Greece, allowing Greeks
to revel in nationalism and America-bashing reminiscent of the days
before the big U.S. military bases closed in the early 1990s.
Several times, riot police have been called out to protect the U.S.
Embassy. Last week, demonstrators temporarily blocked a French military
supply convoy near the Macedonian border. One vehicle's windshield was
smashed and swastikas were painted on containers.
Some polls show opposition to the bombing running over 95 percent.
Sensing a huge potential audience, an Athens theater troupe quickly put
together a show lampooning NATO as a bumbling, Nazi-like power.
Clergymen have also helped stoke the anger. The leader of the Greek
Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos, called the NATO attackers the
"pawns of Satan."
The protests -- many organized by Greece's Communist Party -- are
spilling over in the military. On Sunday, a navy lieutenant was taken
into military custody for refusing to take part in a NATO deployment not
directly linked to the attacks.
Premier Costas Simitis was curt when asked about military dissent. "They
go where I tell them to go," he said.
"Greece is part of the West. Its role has been established. But some
voices still scream that ... it doesn't belong alongside Western Europe
and America," said Constantine Karistinos, a researcher at the Institute
for International Relations in Athens. "The Kosovo situation has
enlarged this divide."
But NATO appears ready to give Greece some leeway. A top NATO official,
speaking on condition of anonymity, lauded Greece for "holding up very
well ... despite the domestic pressure."
Forcing the Greek leadership to pick between its NATO obligations and
pro-Serb public sentiment could create a government crisis and bring
unwanted disruptions in the alliance.
Michael Doyle, a professor of political affairs at Princeton University,
said NATO's policy may be to keep Greece "as uninvolved as possible in
Kosovo."
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===============
Dutch Prepare to Accept up to 2,000 Albanian Refugees
Reuters
20-APR-99
AMSTERDAM, April 20 (Reuters) - The Dutch government on Tuesday agreed
to accept up to 2,000 ethnic Albanians refugees who fled from Kosovo to
Macedonia.
The Justice Ministry said the Netherlands would offer temporary
accommodation to an initial 1,000 people who would be nominated by the
United Nations refugee agency the UNHCR.
"The selection of people...will be determined on a voluntary basis and
will aim to keep family units intact," the justice ministry said.
It added preference would be given to those that required medical
assistance not available in Macedonia and to those with relatives in the
Netherlands.
The Dutch have set up two emergency relief centres in the centre and the
north of the country.
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Thunder in the Balkans, the Washigton Post
Tuesday, April 20, 1999; Page A22
Having spent nearly a year and a half at the American Embassy in Skopje
before my recent resignation from the State Department, I share some of
the concerns of Eran Fraenkel and John Marks ["And Next Macedonia?"
op-ed, April 7].
The writers say that Macedonians are concerned that the NATO presence
has put their country at substantial risk. But it is not NATO that has
put Macedonia at risk. Macedonia's susceptibility can be found in the
choices its leaders have made -- namely, by ignoring clear signals of
trouble and failing to address destabilizing issues with its neighbors
and within its own society. The greatest threats to the vision of a
peaceful Macedonia have been an unstable Kosovo caused by Yugoslav
repression and lingering inter-ethnic problems of Macedonia's own. On
neither of these issues have Macedonian leaders been willing to focus or
engage.
Macedonia's appalling response to the current refugee crisis was
foreshadowed by a January 1998 statement by Macedonian President
Gligorov. He said that refugees should not be allowed to stay in
Macedonia but instead should be guided to third countries through a
"corridor." His recent remarks that Kosovar Albanians would be better
off in their "natural homeland" of Albania seem astonishingly poorly
judged given Macedonia's own sizable ethnic Albanian minority.
Macedonia has done little to use its unique relationship with Yugoslavia
to deter or moderate what has come to pass in Kosovo. During a visit to
Yugoslavia in the late summer of 1998, the then-foreign minister
pronounced Yugoslav-Macedonian relations overwhelmingly positive,
ignoring the danger that Slobodan Milosevic's repressive policies in
Kosovo were bound to pose for Macedonia.
Macedonia also has stalled for years the resolution of its border
demarcation with Yugoslavia, which has contributed to the uncertainty
surrounding the capture of three American soldiers. The Macedonian
government apparently has declined to say whether the soldiers were on
Macedonian territory at the time of their disappearance.
Clearly, the United States, other countries and relief organizations
must do whatever they can to help with the continuing refugee crisis.
But Macedonia itself must step up to the plate and stop acting like part
of the problem in the Balkans. It needs to become part of the solution.
LESLIE M. PADILLA
Santa Fe, N.M.
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