Macedonian Media Monitor, May 5, 1999
Slavko Mangovski
than 5,000 Kosovars to the Blace border crossing on 4 May. A
spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said that
in recent days, refugees have been arriving faster than the
UNHCR can process previous arrivals and send them on to other
camps (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 4 May 1999). He added that work
in Blace has "turned into an exercise of trying to juggle and
shuffle people." A spokeswoman for the UNHCR noted that some
refugees reported that Serbian forces separated young men
from the rest of the expellees at Prishtina train station.
She added that other refugees "showed signs of heavy
beatings." According to UNHCR statistics, there are 110,700
Kosovars in camps in Macedonia and an additional 93,370
staying in private homes there. PM
UNHCR TO SEND REFUGEES TO ALBANIA? UNHCR spokesman Kris
Janowski said in Geneva on 4 May that the UN body will soon
move several thousand refugees from Macedonia to Albania in
order to reduce the overcrowding in Macedonian camps. He
added that "taking people out of Macedonia...is designed to
allay fears of the Macedonian government and keep them on
board," Reuters reported. Janowski described sending Kosovars
to Albania as a "last resort," because that country is
already "swamped" with some 400,000 refugees. He noted that
refugees who go from Macedonia to Albania will be volunteers
and that they will still be eligible for transfer to third
countries. In Skopje, some 248 Kosovars left on a flight to
Canada. The following day, an additional 453 refugees flew
from Skopje to New Jersey. The two flights are the first
taking Kosovars to new homes in North America. PM
01:23 p.m May 05, 1999 Eastern
PARIS, May 5 (Reuters) - Macedonia won a pledge of $252 million from international donors after an emergency meeting on Wednesday, and a promise to try to top that up to $400 million later in the year.
The new aid was announced by Macedonian Finance Minister Boris Stojmenov and World Bank and European officials following a meeting called to respond rapidly to Skopje's warnings that it faced financial ruin because of the war in Yugoslavia.
World Bank representative Ajay Chhibber told reporters that donors hoped to come up with further pledges later this year which would cover the remainder of Macedonia's estimated emergency financing needs of around $400 million.
``Today we were able to raise $252 million. I consider this a show of very substantial assistance,'' he said.
Stojmenov welcomed the pledges as ``timely and swift'' and said he hoped more would be made available soon. He said he also planned to request further debt relief from the Paris Club of creditor nations beyond what has already been promised.
Last week the Paris Club of sovereign creditors granted debt relief to both Macedonia and Albania, in the form of a freeze on debt interest payments for 1999, as the two countries struggle to deal with hundreds of thousands of refugees from Kosovo.
It authorised the two states to defer $360 million in foreign debt payments due between April 1 this year and March 31, 2000 and said it might be possible to renew the freeze in 2000.
Last Wednesday, Stojmenov told Reuters in an interview that Macedonia risked economic and political collapse unless it got aid to offset losses caused by the war in neighbouring Kosovo.
He said Macedonia needed at least $485 million of external support this year to offset an expected balance of payments deficit of $375 million and a budget deficit of $185 million, or 4.5 percent of gross domestic product.
A joint statement released by the European Commission and the World Bank said Thursday's pledges included 25 million euros ($26.7 million) from central EU funds, a World Bank credit of $50 million plus a further $10 million from the Bank, and an expected credit of $32.6 million from the International Monetary Fund.
($1-.9366 Euro)
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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.
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Macedonia Gets Vow Of Cash For Balkans
Pain
05:03 p.m May 05, 1999 Eastern
By Brian Love
PARIS (Reuters) - Macedonia won a pledge of more than $250 million in emergency cash Wednesday as the international community strove to show the Balkans it could deliver quickly and limit the economic fallout of war in Yugoslavia.
Donor nations and international financial agencies promised $252 million in the coming months and said they hoped to increase the aid to $400 million later in the year to meet Macedonia's appeal for help to fend off recession and balance-of-payments problems.
``We are convinced the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, democratic and stable, is a guarantee of stability in the whole region,'' said Fabrizio Barbaso, an senior official coordinating European Commission work on future reconstruction in the area.
``That is why we have to show solidarity and understanding,'' he told a news conference.
Similar emergency meetings were scheduled for later this month for Albania and Bosnia.
The $252 million comprised large bilateral donations from Japan, the United States and France, and smaller grants from a host of others.
It also included 25 million euros ($26.5 million) from the Commission, a ``stand-by'' credit line of $32.6 million from the International Monetary Fund, and two separate credits from the World Bank, one for $50 million and the other worth $10 million.
Macedonian Finance Minister Boris Stojmenov, who had warned of economic chaos due to a flood of refugees from Kosovo and a loss in trade with Yugoslavia, welcomed the pledges as ``timely and swift.''
But he said he hoped the money now would come quickly, that more would be made available soon and that he also planned to seek further debt relief from the Paris Club of creditor nations beyond what had already been promised.
The Paris Club said last week it would freeze debt interest payments due this year from Macedonia and Albania.
Stojmenov said it still would be hard to make any payments next year and that he would raise the issue of debt write-offs.
He said that, in terms of its own population, Macedonia had taken in more refugees than any other country as the largely ethnic Albanian people of the Serbian province of Kosovo fled across its borders to escape the troops of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Stojmenov has said Macedonia needs at least $485 million this year alone to offset an expected balance of payments deficit of $375 million and a budget deficit of $185 million, or 4.5 percent of gross domestic product.
The cost of lost business, accommodating refugees and higher transport costs could hit $1.5 billion this year, Stojmenov has said.
The World Bank and the European Commission have been charged by the international community with drawing up plans for a wider economic ``reconstruction'' of the economy in the Balkans once the conflict over Kosovo comes to an end.
The Commission says this program could cost anything up to $30 billion, although it is impossible at this stage to give more than highly tentative estimates.
While the refugee exodus also is putting enormous strain on the already impoverished country of Albania, the largely Slav, Orthodox country of Macedonia has to contend with the political pressure from an influx of largely Muslim Kosovars.
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Another 500,000 Could Flee Kosovo, U.N. Official
Reuters
05-MAY-99
WASHINGTON, May 5 (Reuters) - A United Nations official said on Wednesday another 500,000 people could flee Kosovo as Serbian forces attempt to clear the Yugoslav province of ethnic Albanians.
"It could be another half-million, or more," Karen Abuzayd, the United Nations High Ccmmissioner for Refugees representative in the United States and the Caribbean, told a news conference.
During the last 24 hours more than 15,000 refugees fled Kosovo and at last count there were 695,000 refugees from Kosovo in the region. There are 404,200 in Albania, 211,340 in Macedonia, 62,000 in Montenegro and almost 17,600 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, UNHCR said.
Refugee families continue to arrive without fathers, uncles, male cousins and sons and the latest wave of refugees features scores of men with bruises and swelling from beatings by Serb police and paramilitary forces who have intensified their search for members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and its sympathisers, said Abuzayd.
Later on Wednesday, about 450 refugees from camps in Macedonia are expected to arrive at Ft. Dix in New Jersey, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalisation Service said. The Clinton administration has promised to care for at least 20,000 refugees.
The first planeload of refugees to the United States is part of a worldwide effort to reduce the burden of refugees on the government and people of Macedonia.
Macedonian authorities closed the main Blace border crossing with Yugoslavia, the UNHCR said Wednesday.
Earlier, officials in Skopje threatened to close their borders to new refugees if the international community did not take more action to solve the crisis.
So far, Macedonian families have accepted 90,000 refugees while 28,654 refugees from camps in the country have been sent to other nations in Europe, not including Albania, UNHCR said.
Germany has taken almost 10,000 and Turkey has accepted 6,000 while Norway and France have taken more than 2,300 each. Canada took its first 248 Kosovo refugees from Macedonia on Tuesday.
In addition to concerns about crowding at refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia, UNHCR staff are now worried that they won't be able to properly care for refugees this winter, since most of the camps have only tents for shelter.
"We're very concerned about this operation in the winter," Abuzayd said.
To alleviate overcrowding and declining living conditions in Albania's camps, UNHCR is moving about 5,000 refugees a day from the border to camps in southern Albania, said Abuzayd.
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Ethnic Albanian Refugees Arrive in United States
Reuters
05-MAY-99
MCGUIRE AIR FORCE BASE, N.J., May 5 (Reuters) - More than 450 ethnic Albanian refugees from the fighting in Kosovo arrived on Wednesday in the United States, where some may choose to stay rather than return to their war-ravaged homeland.
In blazing sunshine, the jumbo jet carrying the refugees touched down on American soil at about 4:15 p.m. EDT (2015 GMT), earlier than expected.
Military officials said the passengers would be taken off the plane and loaded onto 11 buses, 40 to a bus, which will take them to a welcoming centre at nearby Ft. Dix, their home for two to four weeks.
First lady Hillary Clinton is expected to greet the refugees at the welcoming centre. She will not have close contact with them, however, out of concern that some refugees may have tuberculosis or other communicable disease.
Health and Social Services Secretary Donna Shalala and New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg will also greet the refugees.
The 249 adults, 195 children and nine infants left Skopje, Macedonia, on a 13-hour flight aboard a chartered Tower Air jumbo jet. After a stopover in Rome, they flew directly to McGuire Air Force Base in central New Jersey, some 70 miles (112 km) south of New York.
They will be processed at Fort Dix by teams from the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, the State Department and other federal agencies. The screening will include medical examinations.
The refugees will receive English lessons. Ultimately, many will be resettled here, either with relatives or with host families in the local community.
To make them feel at home, U.S. authorities have arranged for them to be fed Albanian food and receive counselling. Dormitories have been outfitted with playrooms with toys for the children, and a U.S. Army Moslem minister has been assigned to serve their spiritual needs.
"Those coming here will be welcomed as I hope our grandparents were welcomed at Ellis Island," Brig. Gen. Mitchell Zais, head of Task Force "Open Arms" that is coordinating the operation, told reporters earlier. He was referring to the island in New York harbour that was the entry point for millions of immigrants at the turn of the century.
Zais told reporters that the Army had been working with the local community to ensure that the ethnic Albanians, who are mostly Moslem, would be treated with sympathy.
"They have lost their family, their livelihood, their culture, but the one thing they have not lost is their faith," he said.
Marguerite Houze, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, said Washington expected 2,000 ethnic Albanian refugees to come to America every week.
Not all would arrive at Fort Dix, which last saw such an operation over 40 years ago when Hungarian refugees were evacuated to the United States during the 1956 Hungarian uprising.
Houze said the first large batch of refugees to come to America was made up of two basic groups -- those with relatives in the United States and those whose situation in the Macedonia camps had been deemed "vulnerable" by the United Nations' Office of the High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
By "vulnerable," Houze said she meant conditions in the Macedonia camps were "not sustainable" over the long-term. She said in just the last 24 hours, some 8,000 new refugees had crossed into Macedonia from Kosovo.
Houze said if they chose not to return to Kosovo, they would be able to apply for U.S. residency after one year and for citizenship after five years.
A second group of around 400 refugees will fly to McGuire on Friday, with two more flights scheduled for next Monday and Wednesday, she said. In addition a group of about 100 ethnic Albanians, who have already been processed in Macedonia, will arrive on Saturday at New York's JFK Airport.
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