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Macedonians move more refugees to NATO-run camps
Yugoslavia closes border with Albania, Macedonia
April 7, 1999
STENKOVEC, Macedonia (CNN) -- Tens of thousands of Kosovo refugees who had been living under squalid conditions in a Macedonian camp in Blace were moved to a new NATO tent city in Stenkovec, where they received urgently needed food and medical attention Wednesday. Macedonia had been busing refugees out of the teeming Blace camp for days, but the pace was sharply stepped up late Tuesday and early Wednesday. NATO officials told CNN that between 25,000 and 30,000 ethnic Albanians were moved overnight from Blace to Stenkovec, south of Macedonia's border with Kosovo. The refugees received a hot meal immediately after they arrived, NATO officials told CNN. As the humanitarian situation for those refugees improved, Yugoslavia authorities reportedly closed its borders with Macedonia and Albania Wednesday, preventing thousands more from leaving the Serb province.
A NATO official also said displaced ethnic Albanians would no longer be separated from their families or sent to other countries against their will. Macedonia's decision to send hundreds of refugees to Turkey without their consent or without knowing where they were headed provoked concern among international aid groups. A British NATO spokesman at Stenkovec said the U.N. refugee agency and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had set up a registration system and would post signs such as "if you want to go to Germany come here." Germany is among several NATO and European nations that have pledged to take in tens of thousands of refugees from Kosovo. Many refugees, however, say they want to stay in the region. International aid agencies had strongly criticized the Macedonian authorities for using bureaucracy to slow down the influx of refugees from Kosovo. But Macedonian Prime Minister Llubco Georgievski on Tuesday lashed out at NATO, saying the alliance had ignored warnings that airstrikes on Yugoslavia could trigger a humanitarian crisis. Macedonia, flooded with more than 130,000 refugees from Kosovo, said it could not take in more than 20,000, because of fears they could destabilize the nation's ethnic balance and lead to calls for Albanian autonomy in the country of 2.2 million.
The latest reports from Macedonia suggested Wednesday that Yugoslav authorities had closed the border, preventing thousands of would-be refugees from leaving the embattled Kosovo province. Yugoslavia also closed the main border crossing from Kosovo into Albania early Wednesday. Morina has been the main entry point for at least 280,000 Kosovars who have come to Albania in the last two weeks after being driven from their homes by Serb forces in what NATO has denounced as ethnic cleansing. The authorities told the ethnic Albanians it was safe for them to return home, the OSCE said. The OSCE said its monitors at the border reported that refugees were still lined up on the Yugoslav side. The organization also reported that some 10,000 ethnic Albanians from Macedonia had arrived in southeastern Albania overnight in circumstances that remained unclear. Many of the refugees that escaped to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro told CNN correspondents that Serb forces forced them from their homes, seized all their belongings and money, and randomly executed some ethnic Albanians.
The U.N.'s World Food Program said on Wednesday it had appealed to donor nations for a further $24.1 million "to save lives of Kosovar refugees" in Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro, bringing to $46.3 million the total cost of its aid operations in the region. WFP said that if the number of refugees fleeing the violence in Kosovo should rise to more than 650,000, the organization would need even more money. The U.N. refugee agency has said about 360,000 people have left Kosovo since NATO bombing began on March 24. Correspondents Mathew Chance and Catherine Bond contributed to this report.RELATED STORIES: Macedonians move more refugees to NATO-run camps RELATED SITES: Extensive list of Kosovo-related sites
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