🚀 go-pugleaf

[04] UNDESECRETARY OF ECONOMY TRAVELS TO SKOPJE ON MONDAY, MPA
Greece's Undersecretary of National Economy Alexandros Baltas is to
travel to Skopje on Monday, where he and a delegation of Greek
entrepreneurs will examine the prospects of purchasing FYROM ventures on
preferential terms.
FYROM's market remains an attractive field for Greek investors, with
indirect Greek ventures amounting to $70 million having already been
established or being in the works.
========================================================================
==============


ATHENS, April 16 (AFP) - Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis
warned Friday that NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia had spread
the problems in the Balkans "instead of solving them, and will not
solve them."
   Simitis, speaking after a ministerial crisis meeting on Kosovo,
stressed that the military action had failed "to prevent the ethnic
cleansing in Kosovo," and had led to the death of innocent
civilians, which he said was "unacceptable."
   He said that Yugoslav President Milosevic's regime, instead of
being weakened, had been stabilised by the strikes, adding that
neighbouring Macedonia and Albania had been destabilised by the
influx of Kosovo refugees.
   Simitis also said that Greece had suffered serious economic
consequences as a result of the attacks, with a "drop in tourism,
major difficulties with exports and a drop in commercial activities
in the north."
   He added that Greece had come up with a proposal to tackle the
crisis, the first step of which would be to seek a political
solution "as fast as possible" involving the United Nations and
Russia.
   The second stage of the plan would be the "stability and
development of the Balkans" after the crisis and more humanitarian
aid to Macedonia and Albania.
   He insisted that Athens did not plan to "go it alone" and
stressed his country's cooperation with France and Germany, ruling
out any unilateral negotiations with Belgrade.
   He said Athens' objective was for Yugoslavia to accept the
conditions for a ceasefire which would coincide with the halt of
NATO operations.
   Simitis said he would set off on a tour of Europe next week to
develop Greece's position.
   He added that Athens was also trying to call a Balkan summit
=======================================================
ATHENS, April 16 (AFP) - The vice governor of the Greek national
bank, Nikolaos Karamouzis began talks with leaders of Macedonia on
Thursday with a view to taking control of the biggest bank in
Macedonia, the Stopancka Banca A.D., the Greek bank said on Friday.
   Karamouzis had talks in Skopje with the Macedonian Prime
Minister Ljupco Georgievski and Finance Minister Boris Stojmenov,
the bank also said.
   The two sides agreed to begin talks with the help of an audit to
be carried out by a consuiltant who will estimate the value of the
bank.
   On the basis of this audit, the Greek national bank would offer
a price and business and investment plans.
   Stopancka, which has 100 branches, is a private bank but is
controlled indirectly by the state. It has assets of 41.3 billion
dollars (38.6 million euros) and in 1998 made a net profit of 444
million dollars.

=====================================================

Tens of thousands from Kosovo move toward border with Macedonia
By Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press, 04/16/99 17:24

BRAZDA, Macedonia (AP) -- The residents of entire villages from
previously spared areas of Kosovo straggled into Macedonia on Friday,
the leading edge of an estimated 100,000 refugees who are being herded
out of the country by Yugoslav troops.


Arriving by the thousands in convoys of tractors and cars, refugees
reported Serb forces had emptied and burned southeastern towns that had
earlier escaped ruin. Serb forces also moved border control posts from
three to six miles away from the Albanian border.


The pattern suggested the Serbs were clearing strategic swaths along the
Macedonian border to defend the province in the event of a ground attack
by NATO troops.


All 3,000 residents of Perlebnic, an ethnic Albanian village in southern
Kosovo, were escorted out of town by Serb forces Tuesday, villagers
said.


''We hadn't gone five kilometers when we saw the village burning,'' said
Ramadan Syleymani, who collapsed with his neighbors in the Brazda
refugee camp, Macedonia's largest. Two more hamlets were on the road
behind theirs, he said.


''All the Albanian villages we've been through, we didn't see a single
living soul,'' he said. ''I think they're going to clear it out.''


The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it believed 100,000
refugees were on the move toward Macedonia; 15,000 have arrived over the
last two days.


A Serb purge of western Kosovo was pressing ahead at a similar pace:
Refugees were crossing the Morini border post into Albania at a rate of
1,000 an hour Friday. Conservative estimates topped 6,000 by evening,
with reports of refugee columns stretching back nine miles.


The crush threatened to overwhelm the meager resources of Macedonia and
Albania, two of the poorest in Europe.


Albania sent army trucks north to ferry refugees away from the crowded
border camp at Kukes. At the crossing, refugees were handed cups of warm
milk and beans to strengthen them after days on the road.


Many of the latest refugees arriving in Macedonia came from the region
around Gnjilane (Guh-KNEE-la-nay), one of Kosovo's largest towns, with a
prewar population of 70,000. Kosovo Albanians said Serbs had forced out
10 percent of the city's ethnic Albanians in the last week, ordering the
rest to reopen shops, which had been shuttered for days while residents
cowered at home.


UNHCR estimated 50,000 were on the road from Gnjilane and another 20,000
from nearby Urosevac.


In the village of Doguna, 20 miles from Gnjilane, Serbs simply opened
fire to clear the village, killing one man, villagers said. Turned back
by Serb authorities at the border, the villagers said they spent days in
the mountains before trying again, this time successfully.


Macedonia, which already has taken in 120,000 refugees, is reluctant to
accept any more ethnic Albanians, fearing its own fragile ethnic balance
could collapse into violence.


Defense Minister Nikola Kljusev said there was no room for any more
refugees and demanded that foreign countries step up their refugee
airlifts out of Macedonia.


Macedonia previously closed its borders against earlier mass expulsions,
but the UNHCR said officials have pledged to keep accepting newcomers.
However, Friday's arrivals said they had waited at the border for up to
two days before Macedonia let them through.


Macedonia agreed Friday to allow aid workers to expand the main refugee
center at Brazda. The tent city currently holds between 20,000-25,000
refugees on an abandoned airstrip outside of the Macedonian capital of
Skopje, the UNHCR said.


Friday's arrivals slept in the open, on the ground. Exhausted, men,
women, old people and children collapsed on top of their belongings,
sprawled in sleep under a burning sun.


''We're happy to have made it,'' said Salih Ismaili, even as he showed
what he said were welts from a beating by Macedonian police on the
border. ''So far, so good.''
=====================================================================

U.S. plane lands in Macedonia with engine problem
02:24 p.m Apr 16, 1999 Eastern
SKOPJE, April 16 (Reuters) - A U.S. A-10 ground attack aircraft was
forced to land at Macedonia's Petrovec airport on Friday with an ``oil
pressure problem'' in its engine, a NATO spokesman said.

``Flying over Macedonia was not part of its mission,'' he said, adding
that the A-10 would return to its base in Italy as soon as it was
repaired.

The A-10, also known as the Warthog for its ungainly appearance, is a
low-flying bomber designed to destroy tanks and other heavy ground
weaponry. It forms a key part of NATO's bombing campaign against Serbian
security forces in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, just to the north of
Macedonia.

There are about 12,000 NATO troops stationed in Macedonia as a possible
peace force for Kosovo. Macedonia has been swamped by thousands of
refugees from the Kosovo conflict, which it fears could spread to the
rest of the region.
========================================================================
========

FOCUS-Kosovo refugees pour into Macedonia
01:42 p.m Apr 16, 1999 Eastern
By Dina Kyriakidou

BLACE, Macedonia, April 16 (Reuters) - Thousands more Kosovo refugees
poured into Macedonia on Friday in what foreign observers said was
another mass expulsion by Yugoslav forces, and the UNHCR refugee agency
warned that more were on their way.

About 3,000 ethnic Albanians walked along rail tracks to reach the
Yugoslav-Macedonian border at Blace while about 1,000 trickled in
through two other crossing points on Friday. The UNHCR said another
6,000 had arrived on Thursday and overnight, most from the southern
Kosovo towns of Urosevac and Gniljane.

``It seems as if people were pushed out of their homes this morning,''
said Leif Windmar, an observer from the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) at Blace, after speaking to the refugees.

In Geneva, the UNHCR said that Yugoslav authorities had resumed the
expulsions ``with full force'' and seemed intent on driving all those
who remained of the 1.8 million ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo. It said
it would fly refugees out of Macedonia to preserve the fragile ethnic
balance in the small Balkan country.

Macedonia, which has said it is hosting five times more refugees than it
could handle, warned on Friday that its hospitality should not be
abused.

It revealed a big cache of suspected Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
weapons confiscated at its border with Kosovo.

``Our border crossings will remain open with no limits and all refugees
will be sheltered,'' Interior Minister Pavle Trajanov told a news
conference in a room full of weapons, ranging from Kalashnikov rifles to
bazookas.

``We sincerely hope that the hospitality of Macedonia and its people
will not be abused in any way,'' he added.

He said the government was sure that KLA guerrillas had flowed in among
the refugees.

A UNHCR official in Macedonia said there was a steady increase of
refugees since last weekend and warned that more should be expected,
with ``at least tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands''
trapped in Kosovo and about 20,000 hiding in the hills.

``We have to plan for an influx of more refugees,'' UNHCR spokesman Ron
Redmond told a news conference.

He said there was little space now left at the refugee camps, hastily
built by NATO troops to deal with the influx, and the UNHCR was planning
to expand facilities.

Out of about 125,000 refugees that had fled to Macedonia, 118,400 were
still in the country, the majority taking shelter with their ethnic kin
in this poor, former Yugoslav republic.

Macedonia has asked other countries to share the burden. The UNHCR said
on Friday it would evacuate refugees to maintain the country's communal
equilibrium, taking up the offers of 28 states to provide temporary
safety.

Redmond said a total of 12,142 people had been evacuated to other
countries, such as Turkey and Germany, and another 1,024 were being
flown out on Friday.

Initial plans to airlift more refugees out of Macedonia had been put on
hold to keep people close to their homes for quick repatriation, but the
UNHCR said on Thursday it might have to reconsider the plan after the
latest exodus from Kosovo.

At Blace the refugees were registered and put on buses with relative
swiftness. Foreign observers said it took only four and a half hours to
process about 3,000 people, a record for Macedonian authorities.

``Things went very smoothly,'' said OSCE observer Henrik Roskvist.

The new refugees pouring into Macedonia through Blace appeared to be in
good shape and most arrived with their documents and valuables. Most had
been put on a 12-car train by Yugoslav authorities, dropped off about
two km (mile) from the border and t old to walk along rail tracks to
avoid minefields.

OSCE observers said some of the refugees they spoke to reported having
hidden in the woods or small villages until they had been flushed out by
Serbian shelling.

``One family said they were in the forests for 10 days,'' Roskvist said.

========================================================================
======

Elizabeth Dole tours Macedonia's largest refugee camp
By Elena Becatoros, Associated Press, 04/16/99 13:41

BRAZDA, Macedonia (AP) - Moved by tales of ethnic Albanians driven from
their homes, Elizabeth Dole called the conflict in Kosovo ''a genocide''
Friday and declared: ''This is a war we must win.''


''My history, my experience, certainly brings me here, because I'm
deeply, deeply moved by the plight of the Kosovo Albanians,'' said Mrs.
Dole, the former head of the American Red Cross and a potential U.S.
presidential candidate for the Republican Party.


''This is genocide,'' she said.


Visiting with one family in a tent at Brazda camp, where 20,000 refugees
are being housed, Mrs. Dole called Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic
''an evil man.''


''The only thing that can be considered a success is driving Milosevic's
forces out ... Whatever it takes,'' Mrs. Dole said.


Mrs. Dole is in Macedonia at the invitation of the Mercy Corps aid
organization. She also was to meet with Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco
Georgievski, the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia Christopher Hill and
several non-governmental organizations.


She was to leave for Albania on Saturday, where she will visit other
refugee camps.


''I want people to feel the outrage I feel,'' Mrs. Dole said. ''That
this could be done to people, to be driven out of their homes, and to
have their homes burned, their cattle killed.''

========================================================================
====

Macedonia seizes arms cache, warns on refugees
11:51 a.m. Apr 16, 1999 Eastern
By Mark Heinrich

SKOPJE, April 16 (Reuters) - Macedonian police seized a large cache of
weapons in a border zone where thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees
have entered the country, and the government said on Friday its
hospitality should not be abused.

Interior Minister Pavle Trajanov told a news conference the almost
130,000 Kosovo Albanian refugees now in Macedonia ``certainly'' included
guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

Trajanov was speaking in a room full of weaponry ranging from
Kalashnikov assault rifles to bazookas.

He said however police had not found any evidence of refugee involvement
in smuggling the weapons seized on Thursday and Macedonia had no
intention of curbing or blocking further admissions of refugees from
Kosovo as a result.

More than 500,000 refugees have been driven into neighbouring countries
by Serbian troops from Yugoslavia's southern province to avenge NATO air
strikes aimed at making Belgrade grant autonomy to Kosovo's majority
Albanians secured by a NATO-led implementation force.

Macedonia, an impoverished former Yugoslav republic with a pro-Serb Slav
majority and a large ethnic Albanian minority that feels kinship with
Kosovo Albanians, fears being destabilised by the upheaval next door.

Trajanov said the arms cache was discovered in a tractor wagon in
Lojane, a border village through which several thousand Kosovo Albanian
refugees have flowed in the past two days.

Two ethnic Albanians driving the tractor escaped but police arrested two
relatives in a search of homes in Lojane, he said.

``We have succeeded in breaking an organised chain of weapons smuggling
from Albania via Macedonian territory into Yugoslavia. We found 308
weapons or pieces of weapons, plus explosives and 28,431 rounds of
ammunition,'' he said.

But this was only the tip of the iceberg, he indicated, saying there had
been a number of gun-running attempts in the last few days.

``Up to now police have no knowledge of refugees (directly) involved in
this case. But we know for sure that KLA soldiers, and individuals
seeking to join the KLA campaign, have flowed in among the refugees.

``Our border crossings will remain open with no limits and all refugees
will be sheltered. But any KLA activities on our territory could
endanger the status and conditions of refugees here. We sincerely hope
that the hospitality of Macedonia and its people will not be abused in
any way. We will not allow events to take an uncontrolled course,'' he
said.

While inter-ethnic relations in Macedonia had not been seriously
disturbed so far by the Kosovo conflict, they could be jeopardised if
security broke down.

Trajanov said Macedonian political parties and the public should remain
calm ``because this is the only way we will make it through this period
of militarisation in our society and the proximity of the KLA.''

He also said some Albanian citizens of Macedonia living in the West were
going to Albania to join the KLA and suggested they were implicated in
weapons smuggling through the heavily ethnic Albanian north and west of
the country bordering Albania and Kosovo.

``Smuggling has been a problem for two years and it's still going on,''
he said.

Diplomats said Trajanov's comments underlined Macedonia's fear of being
sucked into the Kosovo war.

``These are tense times. There is a palpable fear of the war being
exported here,'' said one Western diplomat.

``Speculation is rife in the press and public that ethnic Albanians here
are increasingly getting involved in the KLA and that its (separatist)
campaign could lead to a Greater Albania that would consume Macedonia.''
========================================================================
=====

UNHCR says evacuates refugees to stabilise Macedonia
10:43 a.m. Apr 16, 1999 Eastern
By Galina Sabeva

SOFIA, April 16 (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said
on Friday that a programme to evacuate Kosovo refugees from Macedonia
aimed to maintain the ethnic balance in the tiny Balkan country.

``We are concerned that the massive influx (of Kosovo Albanian refugees)
in Macedonia could upset its ethnic balance to an extent that the
country could fall into turmoil or into a civil war,'' said UNHCR
Director for Europe Anne Willem Bijleveld, who was visiting Bulgaria as
a part of a Balkan trip.

``We are not doing such a programme for Albania as it is not having the
same problem... But it is much more complicated in Macedonia,''
Bijleveld told reporters.

More than 125,000 Kosovo refugees have streamed into Macedonia since the
start of what the West calls ethnic cleansing of the southern Serbian
province by Yugoslav forces. Belgrade blames the exodus on NATO air
strikes. Of the refugees that fled to Macedonia, 118,400 were still in
the country, the majority taking shelter with their ethnic kin there.

At least 4,000 Kosovo Albanians had arrived in Macedonia on Thursday and
overnight, Bijleveld said.

Macedonia's government, anxious to send the refugees abroad, has
repeatedly urged other countries to share its burden. A special
government body set up to deal with the refugee crisis said early this
week that Macedonia could not cope with more than 20,000 refugees.

Bijleveld said 28 states have offered to provide temporary safety for
people currently in transit camps in Macedonia.

Kosovo Albanian refugees now in Macedonia would be evacuated to European
countries so it would be easier for them to return after the conflict,
Bijleveld said. But if the influx continued, that might prompt
evacuations outside the continent, to countries like the United States
and Australia.

``European and other countries have offered quotas for several hundred
thousand people... At the moment we do not need more. But we do not know
what will happen,'' Bijleveld added.

Skopje fears the continuing influx of refugees could jeopardise the
delicate ethnic balance in the country, where the restive ethnic
Albanian minority makes up at least 23 percent of the population of 2.2
million and is viewed by many as a grave threat to the Macedonian state.

UNHCR, the Geneva-based office of the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees, estimates that 525,000 people have fled Kosovo since the NATO
bombing of Yugoslavia began on March 24.
========================================================================

FOCUS-Thousands more refugees enter Macedonia
08:37 a.m. Apr 16, 1999 Eastern
By Dina Kyriakidou

BLACE, Macedonia, April 16 (Reuters) - Thousands more Kosovo refugees
poured into Macedonia on Friday in what foreign observers said was
another mass expulsion by Yugoslav forces, and the UNHCR refugee agency
said more were on their way.

About 3,000 ethnic Albanians walked along railway tracks to the
Yugoslav-Macedonian border at Blace, while about 1,000 trickled in
through two other crossing points on Friday.

The UNHCR said a further 6,000 had arrived on Thursday and overnight,
mostly fleeing from around the cities of Urosevac and Gniljane.

``It seems as if people were pushed out of their homes this morning,''
said Leif Windmar, an observer from the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) at Blace, after speaking to the refugees.

In Geneva, the UNHCR said Yugoslav authorities had resumed the
expulsions ``with full force'' and seemed intent on driving all those
who remained of the 1.8 million ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo.

UNHCR officials in Macedonia said there had been a steady increase since
the weekend and more refugees should be expected, with ``tens of
thousands or hundreds of thousands'' trapped in Kosovo and about 20,000
hiding in the hills.

``We have to plan for an influx of more refugees,'' UNHCR spokesman Ron
Redmond told a news conference.

He said there was little space left at the refugee camps, hastily built
by NATO troops to deal with the influx, and the UNHCR was planning to
expand facilities.

Of about 125,000 refugees that fled to Macedonia, 118,400 were still in
the country, the majority taking shelter with their ethnic kin in the
poor Balkan country.

Macedonia has said it can handle no more than 20,000 refugees, that it
has overextended its capabilities and asked other countries to share the
burden.

Redmond said 12,142 people had been evacuated to other countries, such
as Turkey and Germany, and 1,024 more were being flown out on Friday.

Initial plans to fly more out of Macedonia was put on hold to keep
people close to their homes for possible quick repatriation later, but
the UNHCR has said it may have to reconsider the plan after the latest
exodus.

At Blace, thousands of refugees waited for buses to take them to the
main Stankovic processing camp. Long delays in transporting the refugees
from border zones to refugee camps have prompted concern among relief
groups that Macedonia might be considering summary expulsions of
refugees.

``We know there have been discussions (about this option) and we are
still concerned,'' Windmar said. ``It's been raised at the highest
political level.''

The new refugees pouring in through Blace appeared to be in good shape
and most arrived with their documents and valuables. Most were put on a
12-car train by Yugoslav authorities, dropped off about two km (one
mile) from the border and told to walk along the tracks to avoid
minefields.

OSCE observers said some of the refugees they spoke to said they had
been hiding in the woods or small villages until they had been flushed
out by Serb shelling.

``One family said they were in the forests for 10 days,'' OSCE mission
member Henric Roskvist said.
========================================================================
=========

FOCUS-Train dumps more refugees at Macedonia's door
07:40 a.m. Apr 16, 1999 Eastern
By Dina Kyriakidou

BLACE, Macedonia, April 16 (Reuters) - Some 3,000 ethnic Albanians
crossed into Macedonia on Friday after being dumped off a packed
Yugoslav train about a dozen carriages long, the latest in a seemingly
endless stream of refugees.

Following a now familiar pattern, they walked the last stretch through
no man's land along the rail tracks, keeping clear of adjacent
minefields, to the entry point at Blace, foreign observers said.

Many said they had been shelled while hiding in the woods, or expelled
directly from their homes.

``It seems as if people were pushed out of their homes this morning,''
said Leif Windmar, a member of an observer mission from the Organisation
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) who was allowed access to
the new arrivals.

Another OSCE observer, Henrik Roskvist, said most Kosovans he had spoken
to had been hiding in the woods or small villages which they said Serb
forces had shelled to flush them out.

``One family said they were in the forests for 10 days,'' he said.

In Geneva, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said Yugoslav
authorities had resumed expulsions of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo
``with full force'' and seemed intent on driving all of them out of the
southern Serbian province.

In peacetime the poor region had about two million people, over
four-fifths of them ethnic Albanian and the rest largely Serbs.

NATO says it is bombing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to stop
him ``ethnically cleansing'' the province, cherished by Serbs as their
spiritual heartland.

Windmar said most of Friday's newcomers seemed to be from the southern
Kosovan town of Urosevac, 30 km (20 miles) from the frontier, where some
45,000 earlier refugees had been stuck in squalor for days as Macedonia
hesitated to let them in.

Macedonia, fearing the new inflows would upset its fragile ethnic
balance between Slavs and its own ethnic Albanians, warned on Thursday
its capabilities were overextended and urged other nations to accept
more of them.

About 125,000 ethnic Albanians have fled into Macedonia, and most are
still there. Many have sought shelter among Macedonia's Albanian
minority and about 60,000 are in refugee camps.

The new trainload of people was being registered before being bused off
to the refugee camps set up after NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia
triggered the mass expulsion.

The problem had eased as Yugoslavia closed the border for a few days but
the respite was brief, and the UNHCR says it expects many more to come.

``The expulsions which were put on hold or slowed down over the last two
weeks have now resumed with full force,'' UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski
told a news briefing in Geneva.

``The effort by the Serb authorities to expel the entire ethnic
(Albanian) population of Kosovo is again under way.''
========================================================================
==========


Europe:Macedonia


Balkan Crisis Is Political, Social Catastrophe ICRC Head.


Itar-Tass
16-APR-99

MOSCOW, April 16 (Itar-Tass) - The Balkan crisis is a political and
social catastrophe with the most grave humanitarian consequences,
President of the International Committee of Red Cross Cornelio Sommaruga
said at a meeting of Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies on
Friday.

The International movement of Red Cross and Red Crescent had to take all
the precautions to remain independent from political participants in the
conflict and help victims on both sides, sources at the ICRC Moscow
office cited Sommaruga to Itar-Tass as saying.

In his words, a priority task is to restore a contact between family
members separated by the conflict. Refugees are taken to various camps
in Macedonia, Albania and other countries. Most of those people had to
flee their homes, they suffered a shock and started to look for
relatives they lost in the exodus, he said.

Red Cross staffers in Macedonia have registered over 150 homeless
children and received over 300 inquiries from parents looking for their
lost boys and girls.

yer/dro

========================================================================
==============
Europe:Macedonia


Tens of Thousands from Kosovo Move toward Border with Macedonia


AP
16-APR-99


BRAZDA, Macedonia (AP) __ The residents of entire villages from
previously spared areas of Kosovo straggled into Macedonia on Friday,
the leading edge of an estimated 100,000 refugees who are being herded
out of the country by Yugoslav troops.


Arriving by the thousands in convoys of tractors and cars, refugees
reported Serb forces had emptied and burned southeastern towns that had
earlier escaped ruin. Serb forces also moved border control posts from
three to six miles away from the Albanian border.


The pattern suggested the Serbs were clearing strategic swaths along the
Macedonian border to defend the province in the event of a ground attack
by NATO troops.


All 3,000 residents of Perlebnic, an ethnic Albanian village in southern
Kosovo, were escorted out of town by Serb forces Tuesday, villagers
said.


"We hadn't gone five kilometers when we saw the village burning," said
Ramadan Syleymani, who collapsed with his neighbors in the Brazda
refugee camp, Macedonia's largest. Two more hamlets were on the road
behind theirs, he said.


"All the Albanian villages we've been through, we didn't see a single
living soul," he said. "I think they're going to clear it out."


The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it believed 100,000
refugees were on the move toward Macedonia; 15,000 have arrived over the
last two days.


A Serb purge of western Kosovo was pressing ahead at a similar pace:
Refugees were crossing the Morini border post into Albania at a rate of
1,000 an hour Friday. Conservative estimates topped 6,000 by evening,
with reports of refugee columns stretching back nine miles.


The crush threatened to overwhelm the meager resources of Macedonia and
Albania, two of the poorest in Europe.


Albania sent army trucks north to ferry refugees away from the crowded
border camp at Kukes. At the crossing, refugees were handed cups of warm
milk and beans to strengthen them after days on the road.


Many of the latest refugees arriving in Macedonia came from the region
around Gnjilane (Guh-KNEE-la-nay), one of Kosovo's largest towns, with a
prewar population of 70,000. Kosovo Albanians said Serbs had forced out
10 percent of the city's ethnic Albanians in the last week, ordering the
rest to reopen shops, which had been shuttered for days while residents
cowered at home.


UNHCR estimated 50,000 were on the road from Gnjilane and another 20,000
from nearby Urosevac.


In the village of Doguna, 20 miles from Gnjilane, Serbs simply opened
fire to clear the village, killing one man, villagers said. Turned back
by Serb authorities at the border, the villagers said they spent days in
the mountains before trying again, this time successfully.


Macedonia, which already has taken in 120,000 refugees, is reluctant to
accept any more ethnic Albanians, fearing its own fragile ethnic balance
could collapse into violence.


Defense Minister Nikola Kljusev said there was no room for any more
refugees and demanded that foreign countries step up their refugee
airlifts out of Macedonia.


Macedonia previously closed its borders against earlier mass expulsions,
but the UNHCR said officials have pledged to keep accepting newcomers.
However, Friday's arrivals said they had waited at the border for up to
two days before Macedonia let them through.


Macedonia agreed Friday to allow aid workers to expand the main refugee
center at Brazda. The tent city currently holds between 20,000-25,000
refugees on an abandoned airstrip outside of the Macedonian capital of
Skopje, the UNHCR said.


Friday's arrivals slept in the open, on the ground. Exhausted, men,
women, old people and children collapsed on top of their belongings,
sprawled in sleep under a burning sun.


"We're happy to have made it," said Salih Ismaili, even as he showed
what he said were welts from a beating by Macedonian police on the
border. "So far, so good."


Copyright 1999& The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
========================================================================
====================
Thousands Mass Outside Macedonia
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 16, 1999; Page A25

JAZINCE, Macedonia, April 15Between 3,000 and 5,000 ethnic Albanian
refugees were standing on a road in chilly air today in no man's land
between the Yugoslav and Macedonian border stations here, as Macedonian
authorities continued their two-week-old practice of keeping newly
arrived refugees from Kosovo waiting in the open for extended periods at
the frontier.

For several hundred, it was their second night in the no man's land. The
rest arrived Thursday on tractors, trucks, and cars.

"There are women and children there," said a sympathetic border
policeman, as he shook his head and pointed toward the crowd behind a
long, waist-high metal fence.

"I'm sorry, but it's government policy" to keep them here before
arranging bus transportation to one of the NATO- or government-run
refugee camps to the south, where empty tents and ample food stocks
stood unused all day.

Despite the acute shortage of food and absence of shelter, the
Macedonian government by midnight had allowed just 400 refugees to pass
the border for transfer to a camp near the western city of Gostivar; a
handful of additional buses stood empty by the side of the road.

"They are working very, very slow and harassing them very much,"
complained an ethnic Albanian volunteer from Jazince.

Many of the refugees who arrived here today said they came from south
central Kosovo, from villages in and around the cities of Urosevac and
Gnjilane. Many said Yugoslav security forces ordered them to leave their
homes and never come back -- the same ultimatum delivered more than two
weeks ago. The refugees said they had complied the first time -- but
only for a few days before sneaking back.
========================================================================
======