A digest of the latest refugee news,
as reported by the world's media.  

KOSOVANS: KFOR TO BRING SAFETY* 10 Jun. 99 – NATO troops entering Kosovo will face considerable danger and massive logistical challenges as they attempt to make the province safe, reports BBC News. They will have to defuse mines, restore bridges and return refugees. Operation Joint Guardian aims to pour the 48,000 troops of NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR) into Kosovo as quickly and extensively as possible. It is considered vital that KFOR does not allow a "power vacuum" to develop which could be exploited by the Kosovo Liberation Army or Serbian irregulars. Speed is also essential to deliver humanitarian aid to many thousands of displaced people within Kosovo. NATO will also be responsible for guaranteeing essential facilities such as electricity and water supplies for refugees as they return. NGOs will play a major role in directing the return of refugees to their homes, but KFOR is primarily responsible for the relocation and safety of the civilian population. Villages and towns must be cleared of booby traps, while military vehicles will be needed to transport refugees back. BBC News adds that NATO General Michael Jackson said a "robust military presence" would secure Kosovo for the refugees, but that bringing them home "will not be an easy operation." The Daily Telegraph also reports. [Troops face massive challenge + All eyes on Kosovo – http://news.bbc.co.uk; Nato will do its utmost to get refugees home, says Jackson – www.telegraph.co.uk]

KOSOVANS: BUILDING PEACE 10 Jun. 99 – The war is rapidly coming to an end. Though Kosovo has been devastated by the brutal Serbian assault, the peace plan effectively strips its administration from Slobodan Milosevic and opens the way for the safe resettlement of the ethnic Albanian refugees, says a New York Times editorial. The repatriation of hundreds of thousands of displaced ethnic Albanians, the centrepiece of the peace plan, is likely to take months and a monumental rebuilding program in Kosovo. The disarming of ethnic Albanian guerrillas, no less essential to peace, will not be easy. Making the villages of Kosovo habitable again, and convincing the refugees that it is safe to return, may be the greatest challenges facing the West. The peace plan gives Belgrade the right to send a small security force back into Kosovo after it has first withdrawn all its troops, paramilitary groups and police. This should not turn into an opportunity for Milosevic to intimidate returning refugees. It will take months, if not years, to rebuild and repopulate the province and restore some sense of harmony between ethnic Albanians and Serbs. [Constructing Peace in Kosovo – www.nytimes.com]

KOSOVANS: AGENCIES FEAR RUSH BACK 10 Jun. 99 – Aid workers are scrambling to head off a spontaneous rush of refugees back into Kosovo immediately after a peace deal is secured, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. They say the military agreement is likely to be a signal for as many as 20,000 "spontaneous returnees" to set off in tractors and cars for towns across Kosovo. But they say refugees face huge safety risks from landmines and booby traps, as well as food shortages and inadequate shelter. A massive pamphlet drop in refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia, due to start today, will warn of the dangers. "The message is pretty simple," said one Swiss aid worker. "If your home is still standing don't just proceed through the front door. There's a chance it will have been wired." NATO also expects Serb armed forces to be laying traps in similar fashion to their exit from Bosnia and Croatia after conflicts there. Although the agencies are confident refugees in the camps will get the message, they fear the 100,000-plus refugees who are staying with ethnic Albanian families in Macedonia may not. Agencies are now working feverishly to put in place adequate support inside Kosovo. UN relief packs of blankets, mattresses, a kitchen set and stove are being stockpiled in Greece and Turkey, ready to be dispatched. [Agencies fear a mass exodus – www.smh.com.au]

KOSOVANS: CAMP-DWELLERS TO RETURN FIRST – OGATA 10 Jun. 99 – The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata said in an interview published in Paris today, that more than 400,000 Kosovan refugees should be able to return to Kosovo by September, reports AFP. "There are around 400,000 people in the camps. Their living conditions are increasingly difficult. They will be the ones who will go back the first," Ogata told Le Figaro. She said she was expecting "more refugees to sign up to go home." "In the first stage, we will facilitate the return of inmates of the camps and those living near the border. That can be done over the next three months," she said, while warning that a "massive and disorganised return would not be a good thing." Ogata said she was "concerned" about the fate of Serbs living in Kosovo. "Many of them have already fled the province and the others may also want to leave... We must take care of them, whether they want to leave or stay. We must ensure their safety. That will undoubtedly be difficult at the beginning," she said. Ogata said UNHCR missions, tasked with assessing needs on the ground, would be sent to Kosovo "as soon as the vanguard of the NATO force is installed." [UN refugees chief says 400,000 to return to Kosovo by September – www.afp.com]

KOSOVANS: UN AGENCIES SEEK $473m 10 Jun. 99 – UN relief agencies appealed yesterday for US$473m in emergency aid for 1.5 million people hit by the Kosovo conflict, reports Reuters. The latest appeal brought to US$740m the total amount of funds sought by UN agencies dealing with the crisis in Kosovo, a statement said. The appeal was launched in Geneva jointly by UNHCR, WFP, UNICEF, FAO and WHO. The funds would go towards improving refugee accommodation facilities in host countries and preparing for the harsh Balkan winter as well as for possible large-scale repatriations when peace comes, the statement said. UNHCR, which is spending some US$10m a week to run refugee camps in Macedonia and Albania, estimates that up to 50% of houses in Kosovo are damaged or destroyed. Kosovo is believed to be littered with unexploded ordnance, land mines and possibly booby-traps. Crops have not been planted, roads and other infrastructure have been damaged and there is no functioning health service, say UN officials. [UN agencies appeal for nearly $500 mln Kosovo aid – www.reuters.com]

KOSOVANS: WFP PREPARES FOOD SUPPLY 10 Jun. 99 – United Nations officials are confident they can avert any risk of famine when hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced people start returning to homes in Kosovo, reports Reuters in Skopje. There will be virtually no harvest this year in Kosovo, but a WFP spokeswoman said it had enough food stockpiled to supply the returnees for more than a year. "The resources are in place and we are confident of keeping the food pipeline flowing for at least 12 months," WFP official Abbi Spring. Spring said the WFP had detailed plans for a network of food distribution centres across Kosovo to be to set up quickly once Serb forces pulled out. But Spring said WFP's main concern was the condition of an estimated 600,000 displaced people inside Kosovo, many of whom are living rough in the mountains. Each refugee leaving the camps in Macedonia and Albania to return home would be supplied with initial rations to last them a couple of days. [UN readies food supplies for Kosovo returnees – www.reuters.com]

KOSOVANS: BIG TASK FOR UN 10 Jun. 99 – Peace in Kosovo will hand the United Nations one of its most daunting challenges as it prepares to oversee the return of 800,000 refugees and to help the province emerge from ruins, reports AFP. Kosovo will have to be taken "from virtually nothing to practically everything in the next few years," UN special envoy for the Balkans Carl Bildt said yesterday. Under the peace settlement for Kosovo, the UN is charged with the civilian administration of the Serb province. A special representative who will oversee the civilian operation will be named by the UN Secretary General. "The moment for the more visible and more intensive role of the United Nations is coming now," Balkans co-envoy Eduard Kukan said. Perhaps the most challenging task will be resettling refugees and internally displaced Kosovar Albanians. The Daily Telegraph adds ministers from Europe, America, Russia and Japan were finalising details for what is being called the "Marshall Plan for the Balkans." Sums of the order of US$8bn a year are being talked of for the region for many years to come. [UN faces enormous task to rebuild Kosovo – www.afp.com; 'Marshall Plan' for Balkans discussed – www.telegraph.co.uk]

KOSOVANS: UNHCR AT 'LOW EBB' 10 Jun. 99 – Almost everyone who has seen UNHCR field operations in the south Balkans agrees they have marked its lowest ebb, says David Rieff, author of Slaughterhouse and the Exile, in an op-ed for the Guardian. UNHCR was complacent and ill-prepared when the mass exodus of the Kosovan Albanians began. Former UNHCR officials confide that the mix of daring and foresight that so marked it during the Bosnian war is sorely lacking at UNHCR headquarters nowadays. UNHCR is profoundly demoralised; it has become cautious, even timid. It now seems afraid to do anything but conform. This outlook has profoundly affected those who remain within UNHCR and driven others to leave. Some argue the failure of UNHCR's internal reform Delphi Plan heralded UNHCR's downward slide. Others have insisted Ogata now is too tired to shoulder the burdens that confront her. Also UNHCR is in a funding crisis, partly because of the scathing criticisms levelled against it over misuse of funds and mismanagement. Some of the allegations were true but unlikely were any worse than in other parts of the UN, or the European Commission. The result: UNHCR has become hypersensitive to the wishes of donor governments. A fundamental sense of autonomy was lost, perhaps forever. Worse still, the rules of the humanitarian game have changed. In Kosovo, UNHCR is still nominally charge, but NATO calls the tune. [The agency that has had a bad war – www.guardian.co.uk]

KOSOVO: DISPLACED RETURNING 10 Jun. 99 – Even before the bombs stop falling and the first NATO troops begin to arrive, some ethnic Albanians are starting to return home, reports the Washington Post. They are survivors, men and women who through grit and luck – and occasionally a twist of fate – endured weeks of hiding inside Kosovo and now are trickling back into the towns and cities they had fled in terror. Thousands of ethnic Albanians who spent much of the past 2½ months wandering from place to place in Kosovo after being driven from their houses. These internal refugees ducked bullets, evaded abusive and extortionist paramilitary gangs, hid in the woods, and escaped NATO airstrikes. In recent weeks, hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of ethnic Albanians have been permitted by Serbian police, quietly and selectively, to return to their homes. It is impossible to generalise for all of Kosovo, but in the eastern town of Podujevo, which had a pre-war population of 130,000, Albanian residents continue to trickle in. The odyssey of Albanians who stayed behind is one of the contradictions of the war. Their presence challenges the notion that the Serbs intended to get rid of all ethnic Albanians. [Inside Kosovo, the Wandering Ends for Ethnic Albanians – www.washingtonpost.com]

KOSOVO: AIRDROPS TO INCREASE 10 Jun. 99 – More than 10,000 food rations have been dropped by air to starving refugees stranded inside Kosovo in the past week in an operation that will be stepped up dramatically when Yugoslavia signs up to the peace deal, reports the Guardian. Huge Antonov aircraft, painted with orange stripes, have flown nine missions over Kosovo to drop 13,000 packets of food. A further 4,000 food rations have been distributed on the ground since the weekend by the Red Cross which has sent a convoy into Kosovo. NATO is expected to grant further air "slots" for such fights after a peace deal is accepted. The destruction of Serbia's air defences means planes will also be able to fly at low altitude, allowing pilots to drop food closer to the estimated 503,000 refugees stranded in Kosovo. NATO's spokesman said yesterday that the airdrops, which are being organised by the New York-based International Rescue Committee, were part of a huge relief operation that will be stepped up once international troops enter Kosovo. CNN adds one of NATO's first priorities will be to organise air drops of food to hundreds of thousands of displaced ethnic Albanians inside Kosovo. [Food airdrops to refugees – www.guardian.co.uk; NATO to drop food into Kosovo – http://cnn.com]

KOSOVO: SERBS FACE HARD CHOICE 10 Jun. 99 – Their security forces defeated and preparing to retreat, Kosovo's Serbian civilians yesterday were facing their own stark choice: try to live in peace with ethnic Albanians or leave the province, reports the Los Angeles Times. "In the (Croatian Serbs') refugee barracks where I live, a lot of people are leaving," said one woman. "But I will stay here. I have a lot of Albanian friends, and I still do." For many Serbs, the choice between staying or going comes down to whether they can afford the cost of leaving Kosovo. Serbs who talk about doing so say they don't plan to come back. The going rate for a fully loaded moving truck is more than US$3,000 an enormous sum for most people. Reuters adds Serb politicians and religious leaders yesterday urged Serb civilians not to flee. BBC News reports the leader of the Kosovo Serbs' main opposition movement, Momcilo Trajkovic, urged Kosovo Serbs not to abandon their homeland. Many Kosovo Serbs are likely to go with the security forces. Some may now be leaving because they or their relatives have been involved in reported atrocities that have accompanied the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians. Others may be fearing indiscriminate revenge attacks by the KLA. [Kosovo's Serbs Face Choice: Stay or Leave – www.latimes.com; Kosovo's Serb exodus – http://news.bbc.co.uk; Clergy, politicians urge Serbs not to flee Kosovo – www.reuters.com]

KOSOVO: UNHCR FEARS SERB EXODUS 10 Jun. 99 – The UN fears the long-awaited return of ethnic Albanian refugees to Kosovo could spark a new panic exodus, this time by Kosovo Serbs fleeing from possible revenge from their returning neighbours, reports Reuters. UNHCR said in a planning paper released yesterday there was a "strong possibility" of a Serb exodus from Kosovo, which was 90% ethnic Albanian before the current crisis. The period between the end of NATO's bombing campaign and the arrival of NATO forces in the province could create a power vacuum endangering Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo, according to the paper, which was dated June 7. Kosovo Albanian leaders have pledged to respect the Serbian minority once they return to their own homes, but refugees in northern Albania say many Albanians might take revenge for ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces. "UNHCR anticipates that there is a strong possibility that large-scale return movements to Kosovo might be accompanied by a concurrent exodus of Kosovo Serbs from Kosovo," it said. "Prior to the deployment of an effective policing mechanism, there will be no international agency in Kosovo able to ensure and maintain public order." [UN fears Serb exodus after Albanian Kosovo return – www.reuters.com]

ALBANIA: MORE ARRIVE, BRUTALITY 10 Jun. 99 – Some 106 ethnic Albanian refugees crossed into Albania Tuesday as Serb military forces continued their reign of brutality in the province, UNHCR said yesterday, reports AFP. The new arrivals into northern Albania included 88 former detainees of Smrekovinica prison in the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica. The men, originally from a village near Mitrovica, were arrested in Prekaz, where they were separated from their families and beaten, said UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski. In prison, where they were stripped of everything, including documents, they were interrogated about the Kosovo Liberation Army and NATO, Janowski said. They were released on Tuesday, after repeated beatings. "There are still a lot of ugly things happening in Kosovo," said Janowski, noting that UNHCR had information of houses being burned, and continued abuse of civilians while a peace deal on Kosovo was taking shape. [Serb violence sends more refugees fleeing to Albania – www.afp.com]

ALBANIA: BORDER VILLAGES DESERTED 10 Jun. 99 – Serb forces continued to shell northern Albanian villages on Mount Pastrik bordering Kosovo, where KLA rebels have set up bases and launched an offensive back into the Serbian province, villagers said yesterday, reports AFP. Most of the small towns along the border have been largely deserted as fighting intensified in the region over the past two weeks. Officials said that in Krume and the surrounding Has region over 90% of villages and hamlets have been abandoned. In Krume itself, 60% of residents have fled. Only 5,000 residents and another 7,000 Kosovar refugees remain in the town. A spokesman for the KLA provisional government, Jakup Krasniqi, said Monday fighting would continue "as long as Serb forces have not pulled out of Kosovo and the refugees are not back in their homes." [Serbs continue shelling KLA encampments in northern Albania – www.afp.com  ]

ALBANIA: ANXIETY ABOUT RETURN 10 Jun. 99 – There may be a relative peace, but the 120,000 Kosovan Albanian refugees who have staggered across the border into Kukes are still anxious about how they will ever safely go home again, reports the New York Times. Many refugees were stripped by Serbian officials of all identity cards, drivers' licenses and passports as they fled Kosovo. And if Serbs control the re-entry process, as Yugoslav officials are insisting is essential, then the refugees say the Serbs will simply keep them out. The refugees say this was part of a Serbian plan. Cynicism was rampant among the refugees. So far, the refugees have not been issued any identity cards in Albania, although plans are under way for registration system to be run by UNHCR and the Albanian government. Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have donated computer hardware and software, but a UNHCR spokesman, Rupert Colville, said there were logistical delays. "The problem is, however super-duper the equipment, you've still got to go out and find the refugees," Colville said. There are 450,000 ethnic Albanian refugees in Albania, two thirds of them in private homes and apartments. Deutsche Presse-Agentur adds Kosovo refugees in Albania can hardly wait to return home, but say they will do so only after NATO troops. [Despite Pact, Kosovar Albanians Doubt They'll Go Home – www.nytimes.com; Kosovo refugees want to return after NATO goes in – www.dpa.com]

MACEDONIA: CAUTION ABOUT RETURN 10 Jun. 99 – Kosovo refugees, waiting to go home now that Serb forces have agreed to leave Kosovo, reacted cautiously today to the possibility that they may be able to return soon, reports Reuters. "President Slobodan Milosevic is always playing tricks. We won't feel safe immediately," said an 18-year-old girl in a refugee camp outside Skopje. There was little visible celebration when the news broke late yesterday, as many of the refugees were already bedded down for the night and had little access to radio or television. Some refugees said that even with the withdrawal of Serb forces, there was little to celebrate. "Our lives have been shattered," said one woman. [Kosovo refugees cautious on Serb military pullout – www.reuters.com]

This document is intended for public information purposes only. It is not an official UN document.