Macedonia Will Take More Refugees
By Patrick Quinn Associated Press Writer Sunday, April 4, 1999; 9:31 a.m. EDT
BLACE, Macedonia (AP) -- Macedonia has agreed to keep its borders open and allow tens of thousands of refugees from Kosovo to be moved from a muddy border field to a tent city being set up by NATO forces near the capital, U.S. officials said Sunday.
Also, an airlift of thousands of refugees to Turkey, Germany and Norway was to begin later Sunday, Macedonian officials announced separately.
Macedonia's move to allow the refugee transfer from the frontier no-man's land came after American officials promised to temporarily send thousands of refugees to other countries, including the United States.
``We will do our burden-sharing to temporarily take out of Macedonia large numbers of the refugees for temporary asylum until it is safe for them to go back to their homes in Kosovo,'' said Julia Taft, U.S. assistant secretary of state for refugees.
She said she had received assurances from President Kiro Gligorov that Macedonia's border would remain open to those fleeing Kovoso.
After being flooded by refugees, Macedonia -- fearing instability as a result of the influx -- had announced Saturday it would not accept any more unless another country promised to take them in. It mobilized its armed forces to prevent clandestine crossings, and it banned the sale of property to refugees and called on people not to rent them homes.
Taft said the United States would take in several thousand refugees and that negotiations were under way for neighboring countries and European Union states to accept a larger share.
Although a definitive total was not available, there are more than 110,000 ethnic Albanian refugees in Macedonia. Macedonia has set its own limit at 20,000 refugees.
An airlift of refugees to Turkey, Germany and Norway was to begin later Sunday from Skopje's airport, Macedonia's deputy prime minister, Radmilla Kiprjanova said. Turkey has said it would take in 20,000 refugees, Germany would accept 10,000 and Norway said it would take in 3,000.
Taft spoke after visiting about 70,000 refugees in a no-man's land between the Yugoslav and Macedonian borders. Relief agencies were barely managing to cope, hampered by a Macedonian government decision to restrict full access to the refugees.
Taft said 11 elderly people had died in the makeshift camp in recent days.
According to United Nations refugee officials, about 70,000 people have been in the camp for the past two days. Macedonian officials on Sunday began speeding up the process of moving them to the temporary shelter being set up at the airport near the capital, Skopje.
Long lines of buses were ferrying an estimated 300 refugees an hour, or about 5,000 a day, to shelters being set up following an international relief mobilization.
Taft said she did not know how many more refugees would be arriving in Macedonia, but ``Pristina has very few ethnic Albanians left.'' The Kosovan capital had more than 200,000 ethnic Albanian residents.
The political deal to allow the refugee transfer was brokered by a team that included Taft and Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who met with Gligorov, Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski and Cabinet members.
In an effort to bolster Georgievski's sometimes shaky coalition government, Talbott pledged international support including millions of dollars in assistance for economically strapped Macedonia.
Talbott accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of seeking to destablize neighboring states by flooding them with refugees.
``The essence of what has happened is that in addition to the outrage that President Milosevic is perpetrating against the people of Kosovo, he is also using refugees as an instrument of war, as a weapon against the stability of neighboring states,'' Talbot said. ``He will not succeed.''
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press