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May 11, 1999

Two stories about the compassion for ethnic Albanians
shown by NATO...

Story one:

Campaign launched in northern Albania for refugee relocation

KUKES, Albania, May 11 (AFP) - An information campaign was launched Tuesday
among the Kosovar refugees in the northern Kukes area of Albania in a bid
to convince them to relocate to other areas because of threats to their
security.

Most refugees reacted poorly to the campaign with some even showing open
hostility to the idea of being moved.

Workers from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and
local authorities arrived first at a camp run by Medecins Sans Frontiers
and a site housing dozens of tractors brought by refugees from Kosovo.

Posters were put up around the MSF camp on Tuesday as UNHCR workers with
megaphones read out the contents.

The refugees were told to leave Kukes because of its proximity to Serb
artillery across the border. They were also told that the area was too
small to cope with so many refugees and that more aid was available
elsewhere.

A small group gathered around a representative of the Kukes municipality,
but remained skeptical of the proposed relocation.

They said they did not want to travel "two days and two nights" with their
tractors, which they refused to leave behind, and that in any case they had
no fear of the Serb cannons.

They also said that they did not know how the sick, the old and the
handicapped could be moved and that they wanted to stay as close to Kosovo
as possible in case they could return home.

Women refugees said they did not want to leave because they were still
waiting for their husbands and sons, who had stayed behind in the troubled
province.

Discussions broke down when the impatient government official told the
refugees that if they did not like the  proposal they could go back to
Kosovo.

"We want people to understand that these camps are temporary ... We're not
going to abandon these people but we're going to make it a little less
comfortable for them to stay," (UNHCR spokeswoman Melita Sunjic) said.

Source:  AFP-Agence France Presse

Story two:

Kosovo Refugees to Move to Albania

In Geneva, a spokeswoman today said the United Nations is running out of
money for Kosovo refugees. UNHCR has received only $71 million of the $143
million it said it needed for its Kosovo operations.

``It has all been spent or fully committed,'' spokeswoman Judith Kumin
said. ``If there are no new contributions, it means that we're not able to
continue to procure relief supplies which the refugees need.''

In Kukes, on the Albanian border with Kosovo, the UNHCR began tent-to-tent
lobbying to try to persuade refugees to move further into the country and
out of range of Serb artillery.

``It's going to be very difficult. These people have been here a while,
they're giving us very good, cogent reasons why they shouldn't leave,''
said spokesman Ray Wilkinson. ``It's going to be a hard sell.''

Source: Associated Press

ANALYSIS: If there are 1.5 million refugees, then $143 million
works out to $9.53 US per refugee *if* the $72 million dollar
shortfall is collected. Assuming an optimistic 100 days of
displacement, that's about 10 cents per day for people who
left their homes with whatever they could load into their
tractor drawn wagons.

For comparison, one payload of cluster bombs costs over
$2 million (not including delivery charges). Thirty five
runs (a day's bombing?) equals the total amount received
for refugee relief so far.

==================================================
Note: 5/17/99 NATO is running in excess of five hundred
bombing missions per day. 
================================================== 

If there are no resources available to feed the refugees, why
move them deeper into Albania and further away from their homes
and land? Many of the displaced are subsistence farmers who are
perfectly capable of feeding themselves which is why they are
unwilling to be parted from or move their tractors further
from home. There's still time to put a crop in the ground
though a lot of precious time has been lost.

Note how the UN needs to propagandize to inspire the refugees
to fear Serb artillery attacks. As US Senator James M. Inhofe,
Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee,
said from the floor of the Senate over a week ago, the refugees
are afraid of only one thing: NATO.

So NATO has driven these people off their land, caged them in poorly
funded refugee camps, and is, with the help of the UN, actively
discouraging them from returning home.

And why does NATO need the real estate in Northern Albania freed
up? As Senator Inhofe pointed out, we may not be able to fly in relief
supplies, but the US military has been working overtime creating
and equiping a staging area for a ground invasion.

Where are all the people who were so worked up about unverified,
and, in some cases, obviously falsified charges, of "genocide"
now?

Stress, poor nutrition,inadequate sanitation, and disease can kill
more quickly and in greater numbers than any military machine,
especially among the infirm, the frail elderly, and infants.

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