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Macedonia gets offers of aid as refugee tide rises
12:22 p.m. May 01, 1999 Eastern
By Jeremy Gaunt

SKOPJE, May 1 (Reuters) - A stream of Western politicians toured
Macedonia's teeming refugee camps on Saturday, seeking to help the poor
Balkan state cope with thousands of refugees rolling into a country with
nowhere to put them.

French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, one of the first NATO leaders to
visit the frontline state since the war began, walked through a
French-built camp to the applause of ethnic Albanians sheltered there .

He later announced France was giving Macedonia a supplementary aid
package totalling 163 million French francs ($26 million), raising
France's contribution to both Albania and Macedonia to 981 million
francs

Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy visited a neighbouring camp
where nearly 29,000 people are crammed into a tent city that is bursting
at the seams. He said Canada would give C$35 million ($23.99 million)
for refugee assistance and C$10 million in economic help for Macedonia.

A delegation from the U.S. Congress also walked through the camp,
hearing tales of burned houses and missing neighbours.

As the politicians toured, however, there was no let-up in the flood of
refugees coming in from Kosovo. The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said
thousands more were expected and that a new trainload had arrived at
Blace, the main crossing point.

The UNHCR released new figures showing that as of Saturday morning there
were 173,100 refugees in Macedonia, 79,700 of whom were crushed into
nine refugee camps and temporary holding centres

A Reuters reporter visiting Cegrane, a new camp in western Macedonia
that has already overflowed, saw thousands who had slept outside on
Friday night under blue plastic sheets handed out by the UNHCR.

Aid officials said that although German NATO troops had put up new tents
at Cegrane, it was likely many would sleep outside again on Saturday
night.

New tents were also put up at Blace, where there is a holding camp with
a theoretical capacity of a few thousand. A UNHCR official said 6,000
would be there overnight.

Jospin said he wanted to show Macedonia -- crucial to the West's war on
Yugoslavia -- that France and other countries were ``on its side.''

``(We want) to help the refugees first of all but also the Macedonian
population,'' he said.

Axworthy said Canada would be willing to help expand Macedonia's refugee
camps and would accept 5,000 refugees in the coming days, particularly
those who had spent the longest time in the camps.

UNHCR official Colin Mitchell told the visiting Americans that as many
as 200,000 ethnic Albanian refugees remained in Kosovo trying to get
out.

Macedonia is reluctant to build new refugee camps, fearing that the huge
influx of ethnic Albanians will both destroy its economy and disrupt its
own delicate ethnic mix. But it has relented and agreed to identify two
new areas for camps.

The government's preferred policy is to encourage countries to take the
refugees away. Nearly 26,000 have been airlifted out so far, according
to the UNHCR, with Germany, Turkey, Norway and France taking the most.

Prime Minister Ljupco Georgievski said his country wanted to help but it
could not do it on its own.

``We will continue to do what we can for the refugees, but we need the
support of the European Union,'' he told a joint news conference with
Jospin.

($1-6.189 French Franc)

($1-1.459 Canadian Dollar)
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May Day sees flood of refugees into Macedonia
11:47 a.m. May 01, 1999 Eastern
By Jude Webber

BLACE, Macedonia, May 1 (Reuters) - A flood of refugees poured out of
Kosovo in sweltering heat on Saturday into Macedonia, which normally
marks May Day as one of its most popular holidays.

Aid workers scrabbled to house them in already bursting camps and warned
that even one more day of arrivals at this pace could be disastrous.

Train and busloads of ethnic Albanians queued in soaring temperatures at
the main Blace border checkpoint, waiting for U.N. aid workers to find
somewhere to put them before they were allowed in 1,000 at a time.

Some 1,400 new arrivals had already been ferried the short walk down to
the squalid borderside holding area and were sitting on their bags in
the middle of the camp, waiting to be given food and assigned to a tent.

Jan Sigismund, an official with U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, said up to
6,000 could cram the riverside field at Blace on Saturday night. Aside
from the squash, aid workers say the camp is too close to Kosovo for
comfort -- shots and bangs can sometimes be heard there early in the
morning.

``I don't like it at all but it seems I have no choice,'' Sigismund
said.

The remainder of Saturday's arrivals -- perhaps as many as 3,600 -- will
be bussed to a still unfinished camp at Cegrane in western Macedonia,
where thousands spent the night in sleeping bags on plastic sheeting
while troops hurried to erect more tents.

One unlucky group of 1,200 set off for the camp on Friday night, but had
to be turned back because there was no more room. As it was, some
refugees at Cegrane huddled under blankets after the supply of sleeping
bags ran out.

Although UNHCR at first wanted the refugees to stay as close to home as
possible, dire overcrowding in Macedonian camps has forced it to appeal
to Western nations to hurry and make good their promises to airlift
refugees from the country. Only 624 left on Saturday.

With poor sanitation -- the Cegrane camp has only 72 latrines for 13,000
people -- they fear a disease epidemic is only days away. The Macedonian
government is also increasingly worried about disturbing its own
delicate ethnic mix by taking in a seemingly non-stop stream of ethnic
Albanian refugees.

Sigismund said there was just no more room now in the creaking camps.
Asked if the camps could cope if thousands more rolled in again on
Sunday, he said: ``Not any more. What are we going to do?''

Most of Saturday's arrivals at Blace were still waiting in the sun to be
allowed through the border checkpoint by late afternoon and were wilting
from heat and dehydration. ``They're dropping like flies, they need
water,'' said one aid worker.

UNHCR said some 79,700 were now crammed into Macedonia's refugee camps
and more than 90,000 others were living with ethnic Albanian kin.
Unconfirmed reports said up to 1,500 more refugees arrived in the
northeastern village of Lojane, but most there are housed with family or
friends.

The Macedonian government, which has been reluctant to build new camps,
has relented and agreed to identify two new areas, but UNHCR officials
said they did not know where they were or when they could be ready.

Meanwhile, officials braced for a never-ending housing nightmare. ``I'm
sure (the arrivals) will continue for the next several days,'' said
UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond.

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